Gods of Vindication
by sadistic dreamkiller
Summary: "The resemblance is... incredible." His revenge and her past collide. —SasuSaku/OroTsuna— CHAPTER X: Dei Ex Machinis
1. Step Away

(Re-Edited Version)

This is uncalled for, starting new stories when I tend to ignore the ones that are still up there. –shakes head- Bad habit, but as the saying goes, old habits die hard.

**Disclaimer:** ME NOW OWN. YOU NO SUE. Gets?

* * *

**Gods of Vindication**  
Part One: Step Away

"_Come."_

* * *

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

"_Sasuke-kun, she is the girl, right?"_

"_..."_

"_Kukukuku_…_ she's just like hime, hardworking to catch up_…

"_She's so smart, isn't she?_

"_And she's so vulnerable too._

"_Clumsy at times, but I know that you still hold her dear._

"_Tell me, Sasuke-kun, what will you do, hm?_

"_You wouldn't want to do anything._

"_You just want her to stay as she is, away from danger. From you._

"_But now, you couldn't, because you need to._

"_Emotions tie you down, Sasuke-kun. You are an avenger._

"_She will always be the girl calling for you._

"_She will drop anything, detach herself if she must._

"_She will do anything if the order comes from 'Sasuke-kun'._

"_And I will take advantage of that, hm?_

"_So listen closely,_

"_Because you can do nothing but obey._

"_And besides, you shouldn't care for her._

"_So, sacrifice her to me, and I will grant you more power._

"_Do you agree?"_

"_Yes, Orochimaru."_

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

He walks past the gates, effectively using his index and middle fingers to strike out at the point in the guards' necks to knock them out. Staring at the bodies falling to the ground with the final groans of alarm and protest, Sasuke pulls the gray hood over his spiked head and the cloak tighter around his form as he searches the surroundings with emotionless eyes. No one was watching, and those at the towers did not seem to even detect the new presence that manifested itself inside the borders.

Such lousy barriers Konoha had set. Do they believe they would be protected by these precautions, if that could even be determined as something to protect themselves with? _Imbeciles._

It was a good thing he fled this place. He didn't know how he would have been brought up if he ever had wavered into deciding to stay. Probably going about pulling out the weeds in someone's garden, or accompanying feudal lords, who in truth are grown men shamefully afraid their own shadow would strike them dead if they didn't watch it. Whether he liked it or not, the fact remained Orochimaru had known of his potential, and was the only one who had managed to tap into that successfully, making good use of it. Sure, Kakashi was a good teacher and all, but he still prevented him from his real growth. He tried to stop him from making use of his real ability. That was one thing he could not forgive.

Since Orochimaru told him of that… mission, he knew at once one thing. There might be the remote chance that finally, his teacher had a crack in the head and he was merely toying with him, because his demeanor was of wide grins and twisting tongues. Though in a sense, almost all of his meetings with the sannin had been laced with his venomous words and oily speech, sending him provocated to the greatest extent. Orochimaru had never deceived him, after all. Or a few times, he did, but it turned out all to be for the good of him. Of Uchiha Sasuke's growth in strength. It is why he trusted his mentor.

He told him of what he thought of him, a nutcase, and the reason had been given to him in exchange. He was shown the plan. Just retrieve her, was all he was told to do. To bring her without fail back to Sound. And he made it clear he wanted her alive.

.

"_Sasuke-kun, she is the girl, right?"_

_._

_Breathe in… breathe out… breathe in… breathe out…_ Sasuke repeated the words again in his head. He usually never had any qualms about killing, but every time he came to actually doing it, he always had this sudden pause that would make itself known in the very pit of his stomach. Closing his eyes, hiding his sharingan from the world, he repeated the mantra. _Breathe in, breathe out, just think it's Itachi…_

Opening those scarlet orbs once more, he looked up the high border wall and took the first step in scaling that space to the person at the watch tower. With every shred of chakra that he drew to his feet and used to attach himself to the concrete, he walked faster, closer to the top, until he was just a blur. One might not be able to see what was happening, and in less than a few seconds, he reached his destination without being detected. Nor being heard. Orochimaru wanted this to be perfect, and he couldn't risk the slightest chance he would be found out. In his views, being in Konoha itself is a sin for him, and if anyone knew of it, the plan had failed.

.

"_..."_

_._

The night's crisp air was spilled with the spray of blood that stained the border gates. It was dark, almost black, glinting in the moonlight and following the merciless pattern showing the graceful arc sweep of a kunai, soon sliding down the rusted iron. The head of one guard was impaled upon his own katana, the bodies left on their posts to be found out by whoever was filling in the next shift.

A short distance away, Sasuke's billowing gray cloak fluttered in the wind as he walked off without blood staining anything of his, nothing that could logically pin the blame on him. He would blame it on Orochimaru. It wasn't his fault they died, because it was an order. It wasn't him who wanted them dead, so let them be. It wasn't his doing, and he didn't want to see it that way. He wanted to think it was Orochimaru who killed them.

Sasuke walked down that familiar avenue. The dried leaves swirled around him brushing past his cloak with the occasional unfortunate one to be crunched under his sandaled feet. He stopped when he spotted the familiar grove of trees, stopping in place where he knew she stood before, waiting for him in a feeble attempt to put a stop to his reckless actions. Before, in that part of his memory, everything looked like they had at the height of spring, bursting with life and full of hope, of the color of blossoms and the green of leaves. As of late the branches were bare, the colossal amount of nature's dried children swirling in the zephyrs passing him. This was what they were now.

Like what he had perfectly timed, his trained ears heard the stepping of feet, trudging, a few times scraping the pebbles on the walkway. And soon enough, he saw her form rise out of the shadows and into the path, into the moonlight. Same way he saw her before, wearing that sleeveless red shirt, the tan skirt, arms bare except for the white cloths around her elbow, the forehead protector worn like a headband. He knew she had come from meeting her own guardian, the one who was at the opposite of his own teacher. The Tsunade to Orochimaru, this is how Sakura was to him. They were different, far more than what either of them imagined.

He could easily make her out carrying heavy books in her arms, trying to keep them balanced even though she had the strength to carry them. Volume upon heavy volume was piled in front of her, the tower of books stopping in front of her mouth he could only see half of her expression. That half was enough to tell him she still hadn't recognized him and as she drew closer, that column of books quivered and threatened to fall, making her carefully shift them to avoid them crashing all around her and offer her more to do at that rather ungodly hour.

.

"_Kukukuku… she's just like hime, hardworking to catch up…_

_._

That's when she finally notices there is a figure standing there in the middle of her way, watching her with eyes glittering under the shade of the hood, making his face unseen. He watches her stop, and glare as well, thinking that that defiant expression hauntingly matches her unpredictable personality. He could see the ticking inside her mind as she assessed this new persona who looks like he popped out of nowhere to harass her. Which was exactly what he was planning to do. He knew her well enough to at least predict the most possible way of how she would react. She was thinking probably of how she would find out why someone was out at night, and what was it someone would want from her.

Those thoughts made him at least acknowledge a smirk across his lips, still going unnoticed behind the shadows of the cloth swathed around him. Her pink brows were furrowed in thought, jade eyes narrowed in suspicion directed at him.

Sasuke could feel she already knew he was some hostile presence, his eyes perceiving she had suddenly worn those leather gloves she only used when she was either training or about to enjoin someone in a fight. He knew her speed in taking them on, aside from the other fact she was carrying a stack of heavy books, was something she had worked hard to master, not ignoring she had done it without him taking notice.

.

"_She's so smart, isn't she?_

_._

"Who are you?" she asks him, and he simply cocks his head to the side.

What is the most effortless way he can break her? Penetrate her shields without causing any stir for an alarm? The answer easily came to his mind.

Aside from the blowing breeze, he lets the invisible hands of a sudden, more powerful gust of wind coldly pull back the hood from his head. It was enough to expose him to her, and he secretly shivers at the coolness of the strong air as his raven hair tangles free from the rough material, spikes fleetingly clawing at the air while he pushes aside the longer strands with his hand.

He saw her blanch.

.

"_And she's so vulnerable too._

_._

The books betrayed her, the top one slipping away and pulling the rest with it as its weight dragged them along, resulting in the column toppling over to the stone ground with heavy dull thunks as some of them fell open, the pages flipping wildly in the wind. A few papers wedged between pulled free, but they went ignored as the girl in front of him could only stare at him, with lips parted in shock as her own hair was whipped around lasciviously by the currents. The white sheets of paper that seemed like medical records and notes danced along with the dried leaves pervading the air.

Sasuke stepped closer, just a couple feet away from where she stood frozen in place, taking in her reaction.

.

"_Clumsy at times, but I know that you still hold her dear._

_._

A condescending smirk started to manifest itself on his features, gradually darkening into sheer repugnance of how she never seemed to change. Repugnance of how she was always weak, of how she never tried to hide that about her. Repugnance at how she was always swayed by how she felt about someone.

"Who am I?" he asks softly, parody of her own question.

The tremor of baritone in his voice reached out to wash over her. With the stark moonlight and brittle leaves swirling around them, his cloak burst open and billowed out to her sides as if wanting to swallow her in the shadows it formed, flowing and flapping in the heavy wind.

He knew it; it was that easy to strip her of her defenses.

.

"_Tell me, Sasuke-kun, what will you do, hm?_

_._

Reaching out, he let his obsidian gaze flicker from holding her eyes to follow his own pale hand that rose to her hair and pulled away one of those brown leaves, withered and dry, caught in a small net of those pink strands.

It spoke of autumn, and he let it free into the air when he separated his fingers from the fragile material, returning his dark eyes to look back at her once again.

Had someone who didn't know who they were catch them at that very moment, one would think they were close friends or more likely more than that, who had been separated and reunited after a length of time. The timing, there were no people around. The place, had it not held more painful memories, could be considered in the most remote sense, romantic. Only the emotions were different.

Most importantly were the intentions of that meeting. He was going to need to break her down to be able to use her.

.

"_You wouldn't want to do anything._

_._

"Sasuke…"

She was now over the initial shock of seeing him, and she was searching, prying as if to elicit any kind of answer from his cryptic demeanor. The tone she used hinted somewhere between questioning and rebuking him. Her green eyes roved over his face, judging his almost-blank reaction, acting like a caged animal who is cornered, trying to squirm and back away from the one closing in on it even when it knows it couldn't stay away any farther than it was.

Yet also like a caged animal, she wasn't willing to let him out of her sight.

It can be easy for him, just stop intimidating her, stop manipulating this creature. Step back and give her space, turn around and walk away. Leave her alone. He could vaguely discern there was this part of him wanting to do that, and his mind was trying to find that part to try to understand why. But it was like everything was covered in fog. It made all what was happening and all he was thinking hard to understand. So he remained rooted there, forming the image of him being the captor, towering over his captive.

The last shred of shame and humanity was thrown away for his purpose. _I'm sorry._

.

"_You just want her to stay as she is, away from danger. From you._

_._

"Yes," he answered, voice filled with as much coldness and hatred as he could muster. "I'm Sasuke, in case you forgot how I looked like."

The tremble in her lower lip, the sweep of her tongue across it as a nervous habit. The tremble in her breathing. The tremble in her bravery showed she was starting to wane to his manipulations. The trembling of her form was clearer than ever.

Sarcasm wasn't something he was new at, but throughout the time he spent away from the tame Konoha, he became more accustomed to it, and realized how he could use it to bring about guilt and shame to people he was using it on. Like what he's doing just now.

He slowly raised his hand up to her face to test the waters, see how she would react. Seeing the confusion splashed across her features, he slowly ran the tips of his fingers across the curve of her jaw line, hiding the sudden rush of adrenaline that ran through his body when she seized his hand and held it away from her face, startling him.

She was holding those huge eyes closed with all the uncertainty still written all over her. He needed to read her more carefully, he had to know when he would say which words, how he would tell them to her, or if he had crossed the line or not. If there was a mistake in how he delivered what he was supposed to, he would need to use force on her to bring her to Sound. And fighting someone like her in a village like Konoha would be far too dangerous.

Those sad, luminescent eyes were trained on him again, at the same time she let go of his hand.

She was going to give in. He was going to _make_ her, even if it went across his morals to succumb to the dirty play incited by Orochimaru into his conscience. She was going to be the key to unlock more of the power he needed, the factor that could heighten the possibility of him killing his brother. He would do everything it took.

.

"_But now, you couldn't, because you need to._

_._

Someone like him shouldn't feel anything. It was a disgrace. He had just let his mother, his clan, his _blood_, he let them die, and he was even shamefully left behind. The least he could do was take back the life that wasn't supposed to be walking on the land of the living, someone who had wrongfully taken theirs. He should assassinate that life like what it had done not only for those it killed, but because his own future was destroyed. He needed to appease those who had died. He should just be an empty shell of a person now, not caring for anything except what he was already cut out for.

That's why he had to shed himself of the humiliating thing called "feelings", those that could cause not only his destruction, but also which can take away his revenge.

These people who he had left behind, they misunderstood him. He didn't want the recognition of being a powerful ninja; he didn't even want to be known. He hated being in the light where people adored him, tried to catch his attention, and respected him. It was all so fake. No one seemed to see those, so he had to make his own path. Alone.

It was the reason he left them all behind. They just didn't know what he wanted, those who couldn't comprehend how it was so important for him to gain the strength to finally beat his brother. No one did.

.

"_Emotions tie you down, Sasuke-kun. You are an avenger._

_._

"Sasuke… Why are you here?"

A glimmer of hope traced across those naïve features, and he remained silent and watching, playing like how a predator does to its prey when it knows that it can.

"Tell me," she said, blinking away the sheen of tears.

Crybaby. She shouldn't be letting her own weaknesses out. That was where she was always weak at. Everyone would know in an instant what to use against her, giving too much care to those who surrounded her.

She didn't fit the life of a shinobi. She should just quit it. She was disgustingly soft-hearted, and another thing he couldn't tolerate. She had always tried to gather his attention as well. He hated it, _loathed_ that expression. That kindness she always managed to show, seeping in deep into the cracks of those whose souls were too broken. She wanted to preserve life, when the job she had was supposed to be taking it. It was too much, just too much for him. She was so damn perfect, only in the way he didn't expect her to be.

"Sasuke, are you here because… you've come home?"

.

"_She will always be the girl calling for you._

_._

Her voice cracked, he noticed, when she asked the question in her small, pitiful voice. There it was. Finally, the flaw he sought in her. Something small, but a flaw nonetheless.

"No," he whispered, the words ghosting past his pale lips in a frozen answer, and to spite her, added, "I'll be taking you there."

As expected, emerald eyes glazed with tears, the defiance in her character becoming more and more apparent the more he watched her. He smirked, enjoying the inner torment he was causing her. He had to do this, for his only aim to come true. At that very moment, he could almost taste his brother's blood that would spurt from his torn heart and scatter over his being.

It would keep him going, using everything he had within his reach to his favor. Even things he knew would be far too harsh, like toying with people and their emotions, knowing he was bastard enough to even consider them. And without reluctance, he would go straight to emotionally ripping her apart, if it would make him gain an advantage.

Same place they were standing on, this was where she had told him something he can use.

"You promised me before, that you would do anything. Even help in my retribution," he said in the low tone of his voice, words falling like molten lead, contracting guilt into her distressed face. "I'm counting on that."

Watching her grit her teeth, he gave a small shrug of his shoulders. "Or maybe not. By not accepting, you raise my chances of being found dead."

"No," she said, stressing the word before blinking and looking away. "It's not fair for you to use that."

"You said it. You said you don't know what would happen, but you'll still do anything…"

"Sasuke!" she hissed as she hopelessly shifted her eyes back to him, trying to stop him from saying anything else. Angry and pleading, but helpless and almost in tears.

"… As long as I take you with me."

"No… not like this. Anything else, just not…"

He looked away, cutting her short, anywhere except the entreating girl. With what he was offering her, if he still knew her to be that person who might be rational yet impulsive, therein laid his answer. Make her go with him, and if his brother ended up dead somewhere, it would be worth all this trouble. He slowly drew his ace, knowing it would crush her.

"It was a promise I had been counting on. And you just couldn't keep it."

There was no sound of any stifled crying that could be heard, unlike before. This time she was quiet, the tears just falling down from the edge of her eyes and continuing down her face.

He was playing on the stupid fraction of her mind wanting to go with him, yet he was also aware the coherent part of her which knew it would be wrong. There were many things she didn't do right, so if she were to decide to leave with him, she would be placed as the same league as Uchiha Sasuke. Traitor.

Turning her back on her own village was something serious enough to scare her, knowing she still abided by the rules and laws of society and order. But he was Sasuke, the person who she always wanted to be there for, the one who she always had held when he was down.

"I relied on you before when you were there. I'm expecting you to be here now."

Sasuke had her then, he knew, and when he turned back to face her trembling form, she had her face buried in the palms of her hands, the books lying forlornly on the ground, their leaves being tossed by the wind as his own cape continued to engulf and lull her into an atmosphere of pending gloom. She was already broken down, and if she ever tried to draw something inside her to try and resist him one last time, it would be far too easy to brush it away. She was his now.

He heard her take a deep breath and then watched as she pushed back the pink tresses covering her face. She wasn't even looking at him. Her eyes were ringed with red as she tried to stop the tears from falling.

"Sasuke," she said in a detached voice, raising her eyes to force them to meet his, her arms embracing herself in a defensive manner, "You know that… you're making me choose. Between you and–"

"I'll go now," he answered coldly, cutting her off again. Turning around, his cloak brushing against her when he turned on his heel as it continued flapping in the streaming wind, he didn't wait to see her reaction.

He barely even took the first step before he heard her shout, "Wait!"

Her arms were suddenly thrown around his torso, feeling the tight embrace through the thick material of his coat, feeling her head resting between his shoulder blades as she silently cried. The wind was strong, and she was surprisingly warm. He broke her, body and spirit, so she was no longer of most reason. This was the reason he didn't want to feel any attachment, they greatly clouded any judgment you have to make.

"You choose me over the village?" he asked in that same harsh, low timbre.

"Yes," she answered, the small vibrations of a hauntingly calm voice felt inside his chest when she spoke into his back.

"Just… don't leave like that again…"

.

"_She will drop anything, detach herself if she must._

_._

He smiled. One light curve of his lips, yet still sinister in form, going unseen, especially since the clouds had chosen that time to descend upon the moon, preventing most of its light from reaching the ground.

This was final. It was like _his_ life was in his very hands. No more could Itachi deign over him and try to hurt him more than he already had. That bastard finally was going to die. She agreed to him, at long last. The saying revenge is sweet is a total lie. Victory is sweeter. Far, far, sweeter. He could say it was like honey, thick and satisfyingly leaving behind an aftertaste to remind you of it. Having her on his side was like securing that prospect of triumph.

The only thing he needed now was to get her to where his mentor is. And given what he had already managed to do, this will need little persuasion.

"You will come with me, and I'll bring you to where Orochimaru is."

He felt her nod against his back, causing his small smile to twist into a malevolent grin.

"You will do as I say."

"Anything," he heard her say, once more feeling her quiet voice tingling through his system.

He chuckled to himself, looking over his shoulder at the swathe of pink hair splayed across his shoulder, almost feeling the wetness of her tears through his clothes. Trailing his own hands across her arms still around him, the sadism Orochimaru had infused upon him was going into play.

"Are you sure…?"

"Yes," she repeated heavily, looking up from behind him into his dark gray eyes. The outburst of emotion Sakura showed him through those forest hued eyes sent raging the maniacal glee that he had since the hatred primed at the twelfth of his years, the promise he made to kill his brother, into a mad frenzy. No one can stop him.

"Are you sure?" he pushed, tone rising, pulling free of her and turning around so he looked down on her form, the cruel smirk on his lips and baring a hint of his teeth.

"I said anything!" she said, beseeching him to stop asking that distressing question. It was like she had to say again and again she was to defraud her own village.

Tears were starting to flow again, his fingers digging into her arms as she hid her face in her hands, embarrassed of what kind of traitor she had become. She hadn't even left the village, and yet here she was, already deceiving it by choosing to go with Sasuke. Just like him.

.

"_She will do anything if the order comes from 'Sasuke-kun'._

_._

Sasuke gave a short laugh, watching her breaking down in front of him. Because of him. But he knew to attain something, one must have sacrifices. That will always have to play a part. For Itachi, he wasn't sure what he did was for anything at all. He _did _say it was only to test himself. And he hated him for that. He detested him so badly. And for him? He gave up his chance at a peaceful life. All to kill that runaway bastard.

Peaceful life? Hah, life is sure peaceful if you were him. No one could lay down and have an easy rest if you were always tormented by images of your own brother slaying your relatives, the people you grew up with. It's why he was left behind. He was now the only one who can play the role of avenging them, hopefully righting what is wrong. One is strong when your enemy has nothing to use against you, nothing he can perceive to hinder your goal. That was the reason he broke his bonds. He had to get rid of them, so Itachi wouldn't hurt him through those. No more. And if using them would allow him to be able to kill that murderer, he will do it.

"You will heal Orochimaru's arms," he said venomously, their hair mingling around them, the ebony and pink threading through each other in the strong wind.

At that moment he felt her falter, and then saw her lingeringly shake her head.

Anger reared its ugly head right then and there inside of Sasuke, and he fought back the thundering rush boiling at the back of his mind that almost made him want to make her really _hurt_, instead channeling the force into clenching her arms so tightly she let out a cry of pain.

"You will heal the bastard's arms," he hissed, pulling her closer to him, to his shadows lurching and stretching out as the moon once again revealed itself in its silver glory, breaking free behind the clouds.

"No, I won't," she forced through the pained countenance, forest green eyes pleading mercy at his hands.

"You _will_."

He was feeding off her fear. He could almost taste it in the air, see it in how her features waned before him, and he hadn't even showed he was truly angry at her. Orochimaru had shown him the monstrous manipulations he had always been using, and an example being Kabuto himself, but he never knew playing the manipulator was this… gratifying. He was rather appalled to find himself enjoying Sakura's dread, but it was there. No use denying what was real.

She was squirming, trying to wrench away again and flee from his calm fury he communicated though his eyes. Seeing her take a step backward, he pulled her nearer, tightening his grip. She refused, still trying for release, but his iron hold remained, keeping her under the power of mere threat by his presence.

"You're hurting me…"

That faint, tight tone made him aware of how hard he was actually gripping her arm, but he never wavered, and instead jerked her roughly towards him and insinuating another strangled cry.

Leveling their faces, he stared into those tear-stained innocent emerald irises, getting his point across without repeating himself again as his hands loosened from her upper arms and slowly slid to her wrists without breaking contact. He compulsorily didn't hurt her, admitting what he was doing _was_ painful and that he needed her to give reticence.

"You will heal his arms," he said more evenly, his own dark eyes wandering down to her supposedly pink-tinged lips redder than ever from being bitten down on, "Because I said so."

Burning his words into her mind. Making her know he wasn't just fooling around. Letting her see it wasn't her who was in control, and that he wouldn't give a damn if she would at least cooperate so he would hurt her no more.

To have her know those tears pooling below those green orbs were worthless and they were making him want to harm her further. Let her succumb to him, using ploy after nasty ploy to get her to follow him, terrorizing her, tasting those salty tears with a flick of his tongue as she tried not to sob. Kissing lightly the side of her mouth to appease her, at the same time leaving something akin to a promise.

His hands at her wrists took hold of her gloves and he gave a forcible yank without any protest, at last managing to take off the leather articles and let them join the books at their feet. Taking them off her was like taking away the last offensive intentions left. She was so docile, and open she could easily be likened to a puppet.

Well, hadn't she been before? Always acting like she had no mind of her own, always following what she was told, yet not pursuing the chance to do something for herself when the opportunity came along. But now that he broke her, she was going to be worse than a person whose actions are dictated by another. She would be an object. A thing.

"You will leave this village."

Tears once more were tried to be repressed and she blinked as he straightened up. Not enough damage? Or was it the cruel streak flowing out of him?

"You will leave your life."

She shook her head in that hopeless way, bare hands coming up to cover her mouth and keep herself in check. Keep a sob from escaping.

"You will leave Tsunade. Hinata, Kiba, Lee, whoever those were."

"How can you say that about them?" she asked in the slightly frenetic tone spiked with her breathlessness. It sufficed to say she was depressed and disappointed.

"You will leave all you had."

She was thinking about what she will gain and lose, and if she was as predictable as he thought she was, there was no way will there be any backing out.

"You'll leave Ino. Kakashi. And especially Naruto."

A soft "No…" could be heard, and he smirked, knowing full well it was just something she wanted to express, but was not her actual decision. Something niggling in the back of his head was screaming at him to hurt her even more, and he couldn't help but reconsider what he was doing.

Was it enough or what? He didn't seem to know any longer. There was no right or wrong anymore, lost in the satisfying manipulation of the moment.

"You will."

She nodded, the least she could do as he watched her fall to her knees, cradling her face in the palm of her hands as she lamented everything that she was fast losing. So she agreed, his faithful martyr, and he couldn't help but feel disdain for her. She was down there, in the length of his shadow, as the moonlight streamed from behind him. Like a symbolism of how finally he took her. Like in some myths, the Angel of Dread, only paradoxically he wasn't an angel.

.

"_And I will take advantage of that, hm?_

_._

He knelt down on one knee, mirth filling his eyes and a bitter smile showing on his lips as he pulled away her hands from her wracking frame, gazing at that face he didn't know if he loathed or loved. Letting his own fingers travel to the back of her neck and trace her cheeks, he ignored the clear warning shouts of his conscience he already did enough. And that he should leave her alone; her small hands trying to push him away was another caveat.

"Sasuke, enough…"

"Listen closely…"

.

"_So listen closely,_

_._

She winced, expecting another bout of emotional thrashing. He wasn't done with her yet.

"No! I already agreed to go with you, isn't that enough?"

"... Because you can do nothing but obey."

.

"_Because you can do nothing but obey._

_._

Fresh drops rolled down those pale cheeks flushed red with pain and humiliation. Tears laced with regret. He only managed to let his gaze roam over those starkly lit features.

"And besides, you shouldn't care anymore."

.

"_And besides, you shouldn't care for her._

_._

Her hands were clamped hard at the cloak's rough material clustering at his throat, shaking with either the cold or the fear. Or the pain that he was causing her. She had those glaring, angry eyes directed at him.

"Stop it. I'll go heal him and I won't bother you anymore. I'll heal him but I'll come back home."

That soft, warm voice. Pleading.

He watched with an amused expression as she tried to fight back her own justifications of what was happening. But it was only him who could do that right now, and she knew that, trying to forestall what he was going to say, because he knew _she knew_ she was too weak to fight it.

"Sacrifice yourself to me…"

"Shut up. Please."

With that he watched with morbid fascination as she leaned her head on his shoulder, still grasping his overcoat like it was her lifeline, her hot breath into the crook of his neck adding to the warmth against the cold wind.

"… and I will grant you my company."

A torn decision. But a decision made.

.

"_So, sacrifice her to me, and I will grant you more power._

_._

"Do you agree…?"

.

"_Do you agree?"_

_._

"… yes, Sasuke," Sakura whispered.

.

"_Yes, Orochimaru."_

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

* * *

**AN:** Uh… Manipulative!Sasuke right there. Probably it's only me who has a problem with him as the ultimate sadistic bastard, or is it only me who has a problem with him as the ultimate sadistic bastard? Both? Or is it the overload of reading DHr fics in the Harry Potter fandom? –gets conked on the head - xD

Nar, surprisingly I have no solid plot yet set for this, and I'm not really up to doing this if that's what happens. O.O This is just an experiment, so you mind giving constructive criticisms?


	2. II: Exodus of Feelings

(Re-Edited Version)

Former note pointed out:

1. Sasuke is a misunderstood emo prick and totally not evil. No.

2. Sakura and Orochimaru are cowards.

And the special format of the first chapter is reserved for another major one in the middle of the story in Sakura's POV. I enjoyed the rewritten version more, so I hope you do too. :)

**Disclaimer:** Don't own Naruto.

* * *

**Gods of Vindication**  
Part Two: Exodus of Feelings

"_Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it all, and then some you don't want."_

* * *

What kind of horrible person was she to do this?

They were walking to where she stayed at to gather a few things before heading to Sound and Sakura stopped, right in the middle of the yellow circle on the ground cast by the streetlamp overhead. The realization of her idiotic actions began registering in her normally sharp mind and it simply ate at her from the inside out. The pressure Sasuke had been wielding over her earlier was losing effect, allowing clear thoughts. Clearer than ever. She had agreed to leave Leaf and everyone she loved, and betray it as well by agreeing to heal Orochimaru's arms.

The urge to drop to her knees was strong, to just stay there. To wait for someone she knew and trusted to walk up and take her with them to where she knew she would be safe. It was hard to fight the hysteria building up inside and exerted so much effort to remain calm, not go screaming murder where she stood. She took a shaky breath and closed her eyes, telling herself she could, and would, suck it up.

Unfortunately, Sasuke noticed something was amiss and stopped as well, turning back and watching from the shadow of alternating gloom and circles of light on the streets.

"Is there something wrong?"

She looked back at him, trying one of Naruto's supposedly effective ways to calm down. He was a hyper loudmouth, so there was no reason not to believe him. She tried thinking of a happy place.

Nothing came to mind. She then realized she was being as much of an idiot as he was to actually believe happy places worked. Covering her mouth with trembling hands she fell to her knees, fighting tears with intensifying panic, trying to stabilize herself as she met Sasuke's prying eyes. Help. Anyone. Anything.

"You..." she started surprisingly collected, loosening her hands just enough to speak, afraid she'd open her mouth and let loose a scream, "Do you really want me to answer?"

From the end of his cloak she could discern at the edge of her vision, Sakura could easily tell he fully faced her from under the darkness. She realized if he was to ever attack her again, she wouldn't know what was wrong from right anymore and winced, bracing herself for an emotional defeating.

But minutes passed, and nothing happened.

The cold, hard stones of pavement bit into her knees, the wind blowing unhelpfully all around them and leaving her to tremble violently from the cold. Hair thrashed about her face, the whiplash of the pink locks stinging. Biting. Desolate buildings on either side of the road stood devoid of any conscious life.

They were before an abandoned alley, empty except for weathered posters peeling off bricks and wood and the myriad of sprayed graffiti. Some worn words were changed, some faces on the old announcements grown strange additional features. Walls bore names paired with hearts or mashed together, gang labels and signatures, the occasional obscene drawings, all splattered in multi-colored paint and permanent markers.

Engulfed by gloom where he was, there wasn't any easy way to tell what Sasuke's expression was. The least she could make out was he was looking at her.

The place was at the seedier, more abandoned parts of the village. To both her and the Uchiha, it was a much safer to be in here than out in the open. They were away from most of the strong lights and nosy people, lowering the risk for someone to recognize familiar pink hair and the runaway traitor. His dark features were currently hidden by the surrounding murkiness of the shadows, so anyone who wasn't at Kakashi's level would fail to pick up his presence. He wasn't illuminated at all, and might be able to melt away into the shadows.

"You're changing your mind," he said in a soft, low voice.

Sakura remembered the time where she used to love it when he spoke in that manner. Now it certainly wasn't the same any more, causing dread to dig deep in her heart.

"It's ridiculous," she answered, holding his gaze through the halo of golden light surrounding her and reflecting off his eyes as he stood in the dark. She could almost see herself in the clarity of those eyes, glowing in the nimbus the streetlamp created.

"Everything is ridiculous, you just have to look at it in a certain way."

"No, it isn't," she answered tentatively as she held her own against him, licking her dry lips. It was worth a shot. "You're too blinded by your chase for power to see the way Orochimau is controlling you."

"You don't know a thing," he responded blankly.

"I do! You just expect too much of yourself," she fired back, remembering of the mockery she underwent minutes ago. All possibilities of her actions flashed through her mind, right to his kusanagi splitting her spine. "Sure, you'd be there after I heal his arms. But Naruto's right. Orochimaru only wants you for your body and your eyes. If I go to Sound and help him, then you'd... you'd be gone!"

There was another moment of silence before Sasuke's response, smooth and unwavering. "If I told you I'm not planning to go through with the body transfer, would you come with me?"

Sakura's heart almost stopped with what she heard. That was an answer she never expected to hear, a bubble of hope swelling inside her. She, along with Naruto and the rest of Rookie Nine, had anticipated Sasuke was desperate enough for power to agree to even lose control of his body. To hand it over to Orochimaru with a cherry on top just so his brother wouldn't live.

But now... it was like he was telling her he would come back. Return to them. Complete Team Seven once more.

As soon as the bubble of hope appeared, Sakura tried to stifle it into nonexistence. There was no use in trying to raise up her hopes if it was all another farce. How would he be so sure the transfer won't go through?

"He doesn't care about killing Itachi," she told him distrustfully, carefully watching him. She saw him flinch at the name of his brother.

"I know," he answered, scathingly intoned. "I'm not that dense to not see through Orochimaru's lies, if that's what you're worried about."

Sakura still felt something was amiss, her blood almost curdling at the thought of the Uchiha brothers finally meeting. Sasuke being the one to take her himself here must certainly mean something. She just couldn't quite put her finger on what was wrong.

"What about how you tried to _manipulate_ me? That's nothing to you?" she said, hurt. Bitter. "You used me. Why wait until now to tell me your real intentions?"

The cold was getting to her, her extremities turning numb from the adrenaline rushing in her veins. The urge to hit Sasuke with a punch to that alabaster skin of his pretty face was growing more appealing. Her eyes narrowed at him, ignoring the fact he was dead silent.

"Is this some kind of desperate move? You couldn't think of anything else to make me go with you?" she asked, voice rising. "That's a new low."

"Think of it what you will. This conversation is over."

"Well, then go back to him and tell him I said no!"

"I can't."

A chill of dread consumed her. Black eyes glinted angrily and her breathing quickened.

She couldn't grasp the magnitude of what she was seeing in him. Whatever Orochimaru's reason to have her in Sound was unmistakably a ploy for something, an underlying purpose to all this. Not matter how she looked at it, Sasuke was trying to get her to agree to his plans. He could as easily have knocked her out by now, but he didn't. He had the grace to offer her time to acquiesce to what he wanted. He was... too keen to destroy her to get his way.

"I can't," he repeated, clearly frustrated as she watched him run an aggravated hand through his hair, just a silhouette in the dark. He was very far from the menacing demon-like being when she first saw him. "I'll be taking you by force if you don't shut it."

It may have been unintentional but Sakura remembered him striking her out and leaving her on the bench three years ago. She still didn't understand why he wanted so much the power Orochimaru was offering. There were a lot of people here in Leaf who had been willing to teach him to become stronger, and yet he ran away from that too.

She could do this. She could try. They were in the village. She was in her element.

Hope amplified within yet she felt as if she were grabbing at lost strings. He was master of blinding speed, of powerful descent, and she _knew_ he'd take her down if need be. But she had to take a chance. She had to. _Naruto..._

"Since you won't go through with the body transfer then stay here," she said, feelings soaring, hoping to persuade him and silently praying he would listen. "Kakashi can continue training you, and Naruto is stronger now, he'd be your match. Everything's right here—"

"No!" he snapped, his sharingan blazing angrily to life and starkly lighting his eyes.

That very moment alarmed Sakura even more than when she faced the Akatsuki with Chiyo back in Suna. The extensive amount of energy radiating off him made her skin prickle and caused his clothes to flutter.

"Did you _see_ with your own eyes what my brother did to Kakashi? He's no _match_ for that monster, so what good will his teachings be to me? And Naruto? I don't need some Akatsuki magnet to be around me. This village doesn't care about me and you're still expecting that we can live together in perfect harmony and all the bullshit that comes with your kind of thinking."

Heart thudding in her chest she rose shakily to her knees, wringing her hands together at what she was about to do.

"But—"

"_Enough_."

One moment she was standing in the yellow-pink luminescence as a sandaled foot entered into the safety of her circle, the next she knew she was slammed painfully into the ground and staring up at the bulb circled by moths and night insects, choking as an arm guard pressed into her throat. Her heart welled painfully as she struggled. Sasuke's silhouette hovered above her, black as the night sky and only the sharingan glaring visibly.

"I don't know what's wrong with you. Either you're trying not to notice it or you really don't know," he asserted in a dangerously monotone voice before he leaned closer and hissed, "but if you open those eyes, you're still so fucking naïve to see this village is what's trying to stop me. And it's using all of _you_ to do it. That's the big fat truth, Sakura. You, and Naruto, and Kakashi, and that fucking Hokage of yours, you're keeping me away from what I need to do."

The rough cotton of the arm guard did nothing to allay the metal inside digging painfully into her neck when he suddenly pressed harder that she choked, fingers fighting for leverage to pull his arm away.

"Did you see how Orochimaru actually _helped_ me instead of telling me that I couldn't goddamn use my own potential? Did you see how he brought out what I didn't even know I could _do_? Are you that fucking blind to actually think I'd get somewhere if I stayed here, wearing those rose-colored glasses and telling me everything will be fucking okay?"

"Sasu..."

Splotches of black were edging closer, amassing in her vision. She could feel his pressing weight at her sides as he straddled her, the coarse cloak pooling on her legs. Unable to physically overpower him, she began directing chakra to her hands. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't...

"You're stopping me from avenging every death in my clan, every murder by Itachi."

She pulled with chakra-powered fingers, gasping for air, when he snatched his arm back from her grip and the weight of the heavy cotton around her thighs disappeared, leaving her free to turn over on the ground and cough hard to catch her breath. Funny. She was still trying to contemplate the enigma that was Sasuke even as he wrecked her.

From what she knew of nindos, if shinobi were able to keep to those goals, it was what satisfied them the most in life. It was their nirvana, what they gave their whole existence for. And from what she'd seen so far that night, Sasuke's was to exact revenge on his brother, the crux of everything he did and stood for in the last seven or eight years of his life. Nothing could possibly change that, she now realized that.

And as much as she didn't want to believe his words, she did. He made a very real point. A painfully realistic slap to her face as she tried to catch back her breath, hacking her lungs on all fours.

"I'm coming with you," she said softly to the ground.

"Good. Get up," he replied, cold and distant like nothing happened. "We need to get moving."

She looked up from at him from where she was, onyx spikes high like an illuminated crown and extremely recognizable, and pushed herself to her feet a second time. She could see a condescending smirk edging at his lips even as he tried to suppress it, feeling a flutter and ache in her chest at the same time. Why she still wanted to do this for him, she didn't know. Why she still felt this for him, she didn't know. She just knew she did.

Standing up for the second time, she shakily dusted herself off and felt self-conscious as he watched her. She felt vulnerable. He made her feel weak, and she hated that, how it reminded her she was and always will be the dead weight of Team Seven. For a moment she considered their situation, and slowly reached a hand out towards his head.

Cold fingers wrapped around her wrist before she could get close, dark eyes boring into her. Her eyebrows drew together at his touch lacking the viciousness he earlier used. Holding her breath for what might follow, all that greeted her were dark gray irises washed out of all emotion.

"What are you trying to do?"

She hesitated, then without answering nor looking back, continued as slow as ever, choosing instead to focus on his fingers still wrapped around her wrist, on how her own closed around the thick curl of the hood on his shoulder before tugging at it, blanketing it over his wild hair. Someone might notice him. The _guards_ might notice him.

When she looked back at him once more and tried not to falter, the upper part of his face only belayed the steely glint of his eyes from cryptic shadows. She tried to pull back her hand but his grip suddenly tightened, and he stepped closer, causing her heart to drum up in rhythm as his emotion spike drastically.

"What aren't you telling me, Sakura?" in the light, sarcastic stab of his old self. The void feeling emanating in the air was so contrasting from the quirk on his lips it made her wince.

She wanted to smack him. This was not right, and he was reckless. He may not know it, but he was reckless.

"I... I live with Tsunade-sama."

The tightness making its way to his well-formed lips knotted her stomach. She could tell he didn't expect that, apprehension stalling her thoughts on whether to tell him the rest. Reason won out, for the sake of her safety. "I stay at the Hokage quarters now."

"And you thought to tell me this just now?" a disturbing connotation in his voice lay like a snake in the grass.

"She wants to… treat me like I'm her daughter. So I was moved in," she replied without looking at him, rubbing her arms in an attempt to warm herself. She didn't care to acknowledge the questioning look in Sasuke's eyes before she led the way.

**ooo000ooo**

The mansion was dark and foreboding, the only source of visibility being the bright light from the entrance at the gates. Personal guards were posted up front, and most likely others lurked invisible and silent. This was where the Hokage stayed, after all. And what better way to infiltrate one of the heaviest fortresses in the village?

Sasuke had to admire her plan. However, he also felt disdain at how she came up with it. The feeling it spilled inside him was a new one, a mixture of something like anger and distrust of her brazenness as they stood just beyond the line of sight of the gate. She was mussing her hair and rubbing at her eyes with a vehemence. Once she was done, he made a soft, disapproving _tsk _at her disheveled appearance. How much of this was based on past experience, he didn't like to find out.

"Just... go with it," she told him, and without asking linked her arm in his before uncouthly tugging him with a strength he found lurking beneath her frail exterior.

They had taken the full attention of the security up front, as expected, and he wondered how boneheaded these people were to not have an inkling that someone they had in the bingo books could slay them before they figured it out. Definitely no surprise. Sakura beside him was weaving as she walked and he had to support her, inelegant laughter ringing across the barren courtyard.

At least they had the decency to decide and stop them. _Chunnin_, he judged by the vest. He wondered what would happen if he killed these two right then and there and if it was Sakura's intention that he do so, but he stilled his hand from reaching for his kusanagi. ANBU might be lurking. He was no idiot.

"Sakura-san, you're drunk again," throwing a worried glance at him as the pink-haired bumbling mess tripped. Sasuke's hold on her arm was too lax and she rammed right into the idiot boy in a fit of cheap laughter.

_Again?_ This was new to him, knowing she hated the drink three years ago. How often did she come home like this, who did she drink with? Strangely enough, he found he wanted to know, his dislike for her growing more for it.

She wobbled in trying to stand up and grabbed the hand he lent her, chortling like it was a bad joke. Two pairs of searching eyes now pried into the lighted swatches of his face to determine his identity. The ignorance astounded him, when she waved delicate fingers (_that he wanted to break with a small twist_) in their faces to try to shush them away and let them pass. At least they had half a mind to stand their guard.

"Sakura-san, you know we can't keep letting you have people sleep over," the other guard pleaded, a girl with auburn hair and blue eyes and worried airs just urging him to draw his blade across her throat right then and there.

This was not the Sakura he knew. She was supposed to keep her head, she was _reasonable_, was very meticulous about rules. She did get pissed drunk, nor did she throw herself around like a ten ryou whore. Apparently, he didn't know her well enough. It made him seethe at the temerity of his former teammate.

"Oh, whatever."

He didn't get a chance to ask them nor them to determine who he was, as his companion used monstrous strength to suddenly shove them both, sending them sliding across the dewy grass to opposite sides of the compound and quickly dragging him into the enveloping warmth inside the abode.

**ooo000ooo**

In the safety of her room, she shut the door behind her with a relieved sigh. They encountered no one else on their way up, the house seemingly empty and free of any patrol for now.

She blinked in the unlit room and watched Sasuke walk over to her window and look outside, his right hand on the cold glass pane. Warmth reacted with the chill and fogged a surrounding imprint. She wouldn't be surprised if he appreciated what he saw beyond him, which she didn't know if he was or not, because the view of the village from her room was remarkable in the least. A glimpse from above the village from a building overhanging the Hokage monument.

Ignoring him, she bent over to pick up the empty bag lying at the foot of her bed, something she had forgotten to fix that morning. As if she'd known at the time the surprise in store for her that night.

Suddenly a loud high-pitched whistle pierced the air made her look up at Sasuke who seemed just as surprised, standing still but dark brows drawing together. Dread poured into her insides at what it implicated. She knew he wouldn't understand what the signal meant, but _she_ knew and Kami-sama, _What have you done?_

"What is that?" he asked, turning his head to hold her eyes prisoner, the shrill sound fading away into the night before it was picked up again and sounded once more. The second whistling was long and ringing in the air before Sakura decided to answer his question. She felt a lump rising to her throat, choking her like he did.

"What did you do?" she asked slowly and softly, her hands holding the closet door for support.

The shrieking from outside continued a couple more seconds before fading away like the first one, and left a heavy silence between them. From where they were, they could hear a few of the shinobi responding to the call take to the direction the alarm had come from, running feet shuffling on the street below.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I don't care if you don't know," she whispered and tried to keep fear from overpowering the anger in her voice. He was surely capable of killing someone, but why? He was still Sasuke. He was still an Uchiha. He still came from this village and was born and raised and why, Kami-sama, would he be spilling blood in the same place...

He must have read her so clearly that he cursed loudly, enough to make her cringe. He still was innately attractive with a scowl on his face, lit from beneath by the glare outside the window. He would always be captivating to the eyes, this Sakura knew, however now it was darkly so. Blood tainted his hands easily this time, innocent and fresh. For some reason the latter one was the more chilling cause.

"Are we safe here?" he asked.

"No. The mansion is one of the first searched."

"Then we have to go. Take only what can't be replaced," he ordered, searching for the latch of the large window.

Her automatic response was to be torn between taking as long as possible to pack or do as she had been told. To stay or leave, she remained bitter about this sudden proposal and she shivered as the metal hasp gave way between her former teammate's ministrations, a pull of gusting wind entering her room. It rustled paper at the back of a shelf and she paused, withdrawing it to find a dusty worn notebook bound in leather, its pages crinkly and yellowed.

Between her fingers, she remembered the personal content it had in its fragile pages and settled her bag at her feet before flipping open the thickness of it with the pad of her thumb. Falling open to a random page, its lines were filled with black, spidery handwriting long seeped into the lined paper. It belonged to Tsunade and had been given to her in a drunken fit where she babbled about lost loves and hardheadedness.

It contained a story, a diary of a series of events over more than a week but less than a month, she wasn't sure. Memories grazed the pages, something along the lines of an illicit love story without names, however there was nothing of much importance she could find and had not returned it to the Godaime.

"We need to go," came Sasuke's hushed tone.

Sakura barely had looked up when her hand was snatched and she was roughly pulled to the window's ledge before being helped up to it. The dizzying drop from the edge to the city below caused her to sway slightly, updrafts stealing her balance as she stared directly down. Pinpricks of light beneath her feet glowed like fireflies as her sandals were rooted half on the windowsill and half hovering over the abyss.

She then realized only the notebook was in her hands.

"Wait, my bag!" she said, turning around and hoping to retrieve the sling still lying on the floor. She was about to take a step down when sounds of quick footsteps were heard through the wooden floors and she froze.

There was an insane moment where an arm shot out around her torso from behind and gripped her powerfully, her breath hitching at the graze of Sasuke's knuckles against her elbows, her mind going completely blank.

"No time," was whispered almost mockingly against the shell of her ear and blood rushed to her head when what he was about to do hit her. She was still facing the room when white light spilled across the floorboards from the hallway through the crack under her door. Before Sasuke was the wide expanse and the abyss of howling wind. The footfalls were getting louder, closer, and she felt him tilt her backwards as his knees bent for momentum... _I'm not rea—_

Push off.

There was a momentary lull where it seemed they were drifting in the air and she held on for dear life, clutched at his arm and his shoulder as the gray cloak billowed out behind them. They were going against gravity and she could only watch in petrified horror from afar as the door opened and shadows moved on the floor.

Then they dropped. Heart racing and stomach lurching, she squeezed her eyes shut as she was pinned to Sasuke, the wind whistling as they plummeted headfirst towards the looming ground. This was crazy, because damn it, she didn't know what he had in mind, but as she forced her eyes open against the blistering rush of air whipping everything unsecured into a mad frenzy, the Uchiha's visage was calmly facing the earth as if greeting the expected crush of death, raven hair thrashing about them.

Closer and closer to a concrete rooftop, quickly materializing and zooming in like an inescapable menace. She tore her eyes away at the last moment, feeling an arm around her let go, then in an instant she felt radiating pain as they shot through a massive chakra mattress, landing hard and jarring powerfully through Sasuke's body into hers. Her world was thrown in disarray as she was released and sent barreling to expend powerful momentum, digging a hand deep into the rooftop and sent herself skidding away.

Coming to a ragged stop, Sakura looked up with bruising skin and nicked open wounds dragged over the stony surface, checking on her companion. Sasuke was in a similar condition, getting up and dusting himself off. His hood came down, exposing the aristocratic face turning to look for her, dirt smudged on his white cheek.

He walked over to her with a narrowing of disapproving obsidian eyes.

"You're bleeding."

"It's nothing. I'll be fine." She reddened under his scrutiny and found herself pillowing energy throughout her body to speed up the medical chakra coursing through her systems. Flesh wounds weren't a problem at any rate. At least she hadn't sprained anything. Still, she felt shaken from the experience. Never had she tried to do anything of that sort.

"We need to get to the Uchiha grounds."

She had no time to ask as he already snagged her hand and was dragging her along, silently landing on the street below and dashing through mazes of alleys and weaving along narrow passages between buildings. He kept well into the shadows, avoiding detection from the slowly nearing shinobi guards who were spreading. The inner city wall soon hovered into view, formerly used to separate prestigious bloodlines from the rest of the village's view and reach. Sakura recognized this priggish fence by the similarity it bore the one surrounding the Hyuuga compound, the only difference that it bore painted clan symbols of the fire breathers. The Uchiha.

She found it hard to keep up with the pace of Sasuke's speed as her knees threatened to buckle at anytime and take them both down. Her lungs taxed when she inhaled, feeling the rawness in her throat and the searing burn with each breath. "Slow down!"

Sparing her only a passing glance, he disregarded her problem as they neared the awning gate of the complex and pushed her by stepping up his pace.

She was at the point of giving up and letting herself go when he suddenly slowed down. Only then did he release her hand to let her double over, breathing in long, ragged bursts of air and perspiration dampening her temple and neck. His eyes roamed across the lighted streets, checking where the sentries may come.

Tsunade would be smashing buildings into ruins if she got wind of this, she knew, looking up at the village's dark haired avenger and her personal ruin. Her heart was overworked, too much blood running too fast in her veins and heat rising under her collar. Trying to match his speed was more than she bargained for, but it seemed it wasn't enough.

She knew he had picked up on somebody when there was the sound of metal sliding against wood, the black sword unsheathing from beneath the folds of his cape, its blade ominously catching the orange light of the lamps. Blood of innocent shinobi flashed before her, funeral wreathes and pyres and mothers crying, children, sisters, brothers..._  
_

"Stop!"

Before she knew it she had grabbed back his swordhand, fiercely staring up at glittering sable irises glowering at her. He appeared as if he would slash through her instead but she steeled the emotions cowering her and clenched down on his wrist and forearm with both hands. His voice was malignant and deep in angry response.

"Let go before I—"

"Sasuke. _Stop_."

Beseeching, voice soft yet firm. She had to draw the line somewhere on this. Any bloodshed this night was enough, there was no need to spill anymore.

Something in him changed, the anger marring his features barely placated. Relief sagged her shoulders when he slowly returned the gleaming sword to its home, yet tension rose when they heard someone approaching.

"Hey, who's there?" called out across to them.

Her companion's silhouette suddenly collapsed and she caught him, causing her to bite her tongue for fear she'd give anything away.

This was Sasuke she was holding, she was dead sure. But he did not look like the traitor. A man with snow-white locks tangling in her fingers was spewing blood in her arms, Konoha chunnin vest ripped with slashes and wet with crimson dripping all over the stones. Piercing blue eyes froze her into place as the person who found them jogged up to the fallen form, kneeling and taking a hand in his.

"What happened here?" the man asked, brown hair and golden eyes passing right over the Godaime's apprentice to who she was tending to.

"I saw him like this," she replied, watching the jounin flinch as more coughing sprayed blood everywhere. Why didn't he notice the genjutsu? Was Sasuke this competent as to fool a special jounin? She bit her lip, troubled at the implications this meant.

"I didn't see their faces," Sasuke suddenly answered, stained lips so _real_ it made her ache. "They were wearing... red clouds. Two of them."

The man's eyes hardened and was now watching her, sharp eyes suspicious.

"What were you doing here?"

The question was accompanied by hard, indicting amber eyes of the older ninja and an analyzing glance. She was at a loss for words, her throat refusing to cooperate. _This is Sasuke. Please notice the illusion. Please..._

"Sasuke..."

Cold blue eyes of his mask sliced through her soul, watching her. Warning her. Silencing her.

Sakura didn't have the chance to reply, as the jounin misunderstood her, a petulant _Ah!_ since she was, after all, on Uchiha ground. It made her feel relieved, in a way. His condemning jounin eyes suddenly changed into those of understanding. The man was now nodding to himself, completely ignoring her as he looked past them to the arc over the entrance of the compound.

"You can heal him, right?" he asked as he stood up.

_No. He's not hurt. He's Uchiha Sasuke._ "Yes. I can take over from here."

"I'll leave him with you so I can inform the others," he told her. "Take care."

He disappeared in a flashy swirl of rocks and dust that soon settled to reveal an empty street once again.

Sasuke sat up, dark eyes and dark hair like the illusion never was there, then turned an arresting glare at her. She remained rooted where she was kneeling, still processing what had happened. She didn't know if she should feel shame her village knew she was still to attached to the Uchiha betrayer, or that the Uchiha betrayer now knew.

_Three years and I'm still..._

She covered her face with her hands before his cold touch once more enveloped her wrists and yanked her to her feet, his face unreadable.

"That bought us enough time. We need to go." His baritone resonated through her chest,, constricting a deep seated ache, Sasuke smoothing away the hair from her face and gently tucking it behind her ears. "It's time."

She hated how she was so weak when it was him.

**ooo000ooo**

Back in the Hokage mansion, Tsunade entered her apprentice's room, finding the forgotten bag resting at the foot of the closet. A clearly worried look etched her face as she walked over to sit on the unmade bed. Sakura was too dear to her. She rubbed manicured fingers on her forehead, her untied golden hair flowing off her shoulders and cascading down her back.

Sakura never made brash decisions. She never taught her to. _Where are you?_

It's when she noticed the small piece of paper with a note hastily scribbled peeking from the side of the closed closet door. She opened it and it fluttered to the floor, where she bent down to pick it up. Upon reading it, the worry on her pretty face deepened. This time, the worry was no longer for the unknown. It was now for Sakura's safety, as the Hokage sighed and shook her head. The words were as clear to her as the difference of day from night is, knowing well who would need her student.

When she looked up she perceived the fog handprint on the glass of the open window, and bit her lips, moving closer and pressing her hand beside it. This wasn't Sakura's. Someone had come to take her.

She crumpled the note and shoved it into her pocket, to be thrown in the trash later that morning. This was something she decided no one else must know about, because it was personal. More personal than anyone can imagine.

Tsunade stood up and walked to the door, pausing and remembering the words in the note, hoping no one would get hurt. In any way. To where Sakura had gone, it would be a double-edged sword.

_"I'm fine. He's taking me to his master."_

**ooo000ooo**

The leatherbound notebook lay beside her pillow, peeking out of her pouch. As of now it had no value whatsoever aside from being a good read, though keeping it for the fact it was the only thing she was able to take. Sakura turned to her side on the bed, Sasuke deciding to check into an inn the moment the sun started peeking over the mountain tops.

The sheets smelled strongly of laundry soap, but she would pick this anytime over the other places where they found moldy pillows and unscrubbed floors. However, the only drawback was apparently this wasn't an inn at all. It was a place where prostitutes brought their clientele. What had made it obvious was the single circular bed in the middle of the small room, mirrors all over the place, the fancy cheap lighting, and the most incriminating being the bathroom wall made of only glass.

She tried keeping her imagination uncreative in regard to what must have already happened on the bed she was lying on.

From where she was, she could see the back of Sasuke's head as he lay silently on the floor, overlaying the cement with an extra blanket. He was turned away from her as she watched his slow breathing, the constant rise and fall of his shoulders in a lazy rhythm. However at ease he seemed to be, she knew he was aware of his surroundings. He always had been, even during Team Seven.

The only sounds were the start of activity outside the inn. Merchants were rolling out their carts to the market, mothers preparing food, morning birds chirping, the dogs barking and hushed conversation keeping the quietness of the hour. Sasuke had closed the curtains the moment they entered to keep the light from coming in and disturbing them while they rested. He mentioned they would only be traveling at night to avoid discovery.

"Stop staring and sleep," his voice suddenly came from behind his pillow, breaching the silence in the room.

"I wasn't," she answered, pink eyebrows rising.

"I can feel your eyes on me."

"I was just thinking."

"You're still looking at me," he said with finality. "Go to sleep."

She relented, pulling the blanket up to her chin and curling up under the covers. She had been awake for almost twenty-four hours now. When he found her around midnight, she would have given anything for a nap. However, as of now sleep eluded her, the direct consequence of what happened in the last hours of her day.

The anxiety and nervousness exhausted her, not to mention the physical toll, but she still couldn't sleep. It was just too much to take in at the moment, and the adrenaline in her blood that kept her going was only beginning to thin out.

She turned on her back and let herself relax, stretching out and facing the ceiling, which hadn't been forgotten by the substandard designer who decorated the place. Inlaid with a huge mirror and she stared back at the girl on the bed, pink hair fanning across the pillow and tired green eyes stark against a rather pallid complexion. She made a face at herself.

They had been running at top speed for hours, because Sasuke deemed stopping at the villages near Konoha was a precarious move where they would be furtively searched. The place he chose wasn't a village, only a small town meant for ordinary travelers frequenting the roads.

At that moment she noticed him change his position through the mirror, silently watching the way he fixed his pillow before lying down again. He had been doing that for the last fifteen minutes.

"Sasuke," she called before she realized what she was doing, wondering why she even bothered. "We can share the bed. It's big enough."

"Don't mind me."

His eyes were closed, the relaxed shoulders, the calmness of how he just lay there like it was nothing. He always had been a great pretender.

"Sasuke."

"Stop bothering me," he rebuked, velvet tone edgier this time. She bit her lip and sat up on the bed.

"Sasuke."

She waited for a reaction that never came.

"Sasuke," she tried again, keeping her voice the same to avoid provoking his nastier side.

"Can't anyone get some peace with you around?" he finally asked out of irritation, he himself sitting up and facing her, her toes digging into the mattress at how he stared questioningly. It now seemed like a bad idea to be doing this.

"You don't have to sleep on the floor," she pointed out tentatively. "We can share."

"I've slept on worse."

"Sasuke." His face darkened. "I wouldn't mind."

"What are you getting to?" he finally asked acerbically, leaning back on his hands, nebulous eyes boring into her. She found herself unable to meet them directly, heat rising to her face. Stupid her, opening her mouth in the first place. She could have left him alone.

"Is it really... is it bad to even worry about you?"

A short, forced laugh came from Sasuke, scorning.

"I'm not getting in bed, nor am I _sleeping_ with you," he told her darkly.

Sakura kept still, frozen shocked and embarrassed by his words, a red flush spreading down her neck and across her chest. Her fingers slowly curled into fists as tears stung behind her eyelids. She hadn't meant it that way at all. No. No more sobbing, weak Haruno. She was not going to cry on this. Not openly, at least. She had to play strong, even though the offensive remark stung like a direct insult.

"I haven't said anything and yet you blush?" he asked, suddenly straightening and watching her with an unreadable mask trimmed in curiosity. She couldn't reply. If she tried to, her voice would only break and _that_ would cause her to break. She took a deep breath, then her heart gave an awful throb.

He had risen and was stalking toward her, the mattress dipping from his weight as he sat down. He was too close, even more so when his fingers pressed at the center of her chest. She was sure he could feel the frantic beating beneath.

"Of course, you would like that, won't you?" he sibilated, lips languidly moving against her cheek, causing her to stiffen and a shudder sweep across her skin, sliding down her sides.

Her hands twisted the blanket as he pulled back slightly, his actions confusing and muting her. Watching carefully, his fingertips remained uncomfortably pressed between her collarbones and when he pushed her backward she did not relent, forest-hued eyes imploring as they rose to meet his. The threadbare sheet in her palms was being mangled, almost tearing.

Sakura swallowed hard when power backed his action and she was slowly pressed down into the mattress, his knees on either side and his body warm over hers. Those accursed lips were brought near her ear and the ceiling mirror brandished her a view of them, Sasuke positioned risquely above her with his shoulders tense and black hair stark against the cream bedcovers. The treacherous looking glass also exposed her in all her crimson-faced shame.

His voice was a drawl, a low tremor smoothly masking his words' harshness.

"Go the fuck to sleep."

He drew back and the springs beneath them creaked when he rolled over to the other side of the bed, pulling his blanket over himself.

It felt like someone let back the air in the room to Sakura, remembering how to breath again as she tightly closed her eyes. A shaft of sunlight escaped the heavily curtained window and a golden ray sliced through the center of the circular bed, warm across her torso. Sasuke was unperturbed and appeared to be downed by easy sleep beside her. The oblivion she was seeking did not come fast enough and she prayed with the will of fire for strength to be able to survive this.

* * *

_Whisper_.


	3. III: Liquid Obsidian

(Re-Edited Version)

Done! This is still riddled with typos and some other errors, I know. But I want to get it out of the way because I have other things to write.

Those who've read the old chapters know why Sasuke is acting strangely at the end of this, but I've decided to be more subtle about the issue than before. It was meant to be a shocker and be as grotesque as possible (such is the mind of my 15-year-old self, alas). However, due to the possibility of this being deleted and me banned from the site, I'll find a way to be more subtle but just as shocking. Hard stuff to do, I know.

Anyway, reviews are appreciated and I hope you enjoy. :D

**Disclaimer:** If ever I owned Naruto, it would be far more twisted than it is.

* * *

**Gods of Vindication  
**Part Three: Liquid Obsidian

"_And our scars remind us that the past is real, I tear my heart open just to feel…"_

* * *

The strip of sunshine had come and gone and the room was getting darker by the minute. Through the shaft of open window he could glimpse through the curtains, Sasuke stared at the lavender sky as he lay on his front. It was dusk.

He breathed in deeply, staring at the patch of brightness and the single source of light in the room. He felt comfortable and at peace, the first in a long time. Gray eyes so dark they were almost black flitted down to his companion on the bed, softly sleeping without a care in the world. She also looked at peace, so jeopardizingly so.

Before he knew it, a smirk made its way onto his lips, condescening of her gullibility.

Sakura was curled in a ball, breathing soft and protracted in deep slumber, hair almost white in the half light. At least she was facing him. She had been always so careless about the little things, so dependent on others to fill in the void in her weakness, a madly irritating habit being carried on to this day. Even from before, she needed someone to watch her back for the night, unable to fully count on herself. Each time they slept in a tent with Kakashi mooning on his orange book outside, he envied how she could sleep so soundly like danger wasn't around the corner. It was so sickening how she never outgrew that.

She made a deep sigh, pink lips parting as she moved her head and exposed a pale throat. His breath stilled. Beneath the smooth skin there was life, pulsing in a steady beat that captured his attention. She was just as alive as him, and it was tempting to see if he could quell her blood, just stop it cold and watch her essence fade away.

The beating of her heart was the same tempo in her veins, arteries, capillaries, and he reached across to her half of the circular bed, resting his hand across that throat, splaying his fingers across the supple skin within his reach. He could feel every throb beneath his thumb and fingertips, cartilage sculpted beneath the span of his hand.

He wanted, a strong and dreadful desire, to clamp down then watch her struggle. There was a numbing rush in his ears drowning his senses to go on, _Do it. _He tried resisting. Killing her off would make all his effort so far as worthless as she was to him. But her blood continued pounding, alluring like a lustful lover on a cold night.

Suddenly she changed positions, and his heart took a wayward plunge. He would have slit her throat had he not been consciously watching her. She moved closer to him, nuzzling at his shoulder like a cat, his jaw hardening at the sight of pink hair, bleached colorless by twilight, mussed before his pillow and her body soft and clinging to his arm. She was searching for warmth. Gravitating toward someone sharing your bed was normal, he knew, especially on cold nights. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to have tried to touch her. He wondered what Orochimaru would say if he told him she died being suffocated under a pillow.

When he tried prying his hostaged limb away from his former teammate, she spoke a muffled whisper triggering a deep seated bell of emotion that sent his ears ringing.

"Naruto... stop squirming... baka..."

_Naruto!? _Even if he could slap her awake, he didn't. It was so grotesquely annoying to just picture the image of the two of them sharing a bed so he forced it out of his mind. They would be a good match, Tweedledum and Tweedledumber. He hadn't expected it though, and the very thought made him want to carry out throttling her in her sleep. Was it Naruto who shared her bed during drunken nights? Was he the one who made her into what she was now? _Did he finally get between your legs like he wanted to?_

Nevertheless, he shoved his convictions aside for the moment and continued watching the slice of sky outside instead, feeling her breathing against him. In a few minutes he'd have to wake her up anyway, and they'd continue on. No more dreaming of Naruto.

**ooo000ooo**

They had left the outskirts of Konoha for some time now and traveled mostly on foot for the whole night. By the darkest hours they managed to hitch a ride with a boy leading his donkey-driven cart. He asked no questions about them when Sasuke handed him a tinkling bag heavy with silver, going so far as to alert them when passing checkpoints. That was hours ago, and they were now back on foot towards Sound.

She felt warm in the civilian coat Sasuke lent her, remembering how they detoured through his abandoned home and how she walked through its darkened, dusty halls. She was thankful she accepted it. The climate changed rapidly, the trees thinning out and patches of slush appearing all over the place. The cold seeped into her skin and made her shiver. They recently passed another travelers town whose warm inns and fireplace she longed to go back to.

Trudging forward, Sakura could now see the sky in the east turning into a light pink color merging with indigo and sparkling stars of the west. It was already dawn, which was unusually late for them to start finding a place to stay.

"Are we going to... find a place to rest?" she asked, breaking the silence which hung between them for hours.

Sasuke abruptly stopped and turned around to face her, expression set in hard scrutiny. He hadn't talked to her since the incident where she had tried to make him sleep on the bed. His moods were more volatile now, and precariously unreadable. She had been just about to catch on to the way he communicated with them before he left all those years ago, and now she had absolutely no idea what to expect.

"Are you tired?" he asked sharply, causing her to stop in her tracks as well. "If you are, we could. But you know, I was thinking we could reach our destination by noon if we kept going. Of course, if you're tired, _princess_, we can stop if you want us to."

He was at it again, voice thickly lined with sarcasm and probably conveying she and Naruto were far out of his league. She had yet to adjust to the switch of sleeping in the day and awake at night, and now he was changing it again. She probably showed it, the ostentatious bastard. He knew she would prove him right by agreeing she couldn't go further, and at the same time she knew she wouldn't last much longer if she kept her mouth shut.

He was making her do it on purpose, to tell him she was weak and couldn't be like him. Her mouth soured.

"I'm fine, Sasuke-kun," formally addressing him and giving him a tight smile. "You're right, it's stupid of me."

She moved forward, passing him, and the moment she took a step beyond him the Uchiha grabbed an arm to roughly held her back, twisting it behind her and shoving her kneeling to the ground. Pain flashed when she tried to move, bracing herself on the dusty earth with her free arm.

"You're such a bad liar," she heard him say with a hiss in his tone, his grip wielding fingers like steel.

"Please," she entreated, wondering how he had developed such a vicious streak, "Sasuke..."

He didn't let her finish but he did listen, however, and released her, leaving her once again to pick herself up and try to regain whatever dignity she had. He never seemed to care about anything yet whenever the chance arose for him to cut her down, he takes it with a vengeance. Something in him had changed that night when he woke her up, black eyes glittering in the darkness as he shook her awake. There was a difference in him, something which he had quickly masked when she tried to ask him.

Now, he had turned quick-tempered, too easily triggered into hurting her. For what reason, she didn't know. She guessed as much he maybe wanted to see her suffer, the only reason he seemed to continue doing as he pleased, never answering her questions.

It was the not knowing that made her scared. And it turned to be so hard not to cry because _this _is not Sasuke, at least not the one she knew. Raising her head to look over shoulder at the dark-haired avenger standing behind her, it hurt her to know this was not him. Yet at the same time, he was, because he was there, watching her with unmoved eyes and waiting for her to stand. He was so painfully the same, but even more so painfully different.

"Get up."

His voice was deeper, more commanding. In a sense he had become threatening in every way, every move, every turn of his head. He turned around, walking back along the path back toward the village. Insolence raged in her, of why he was acting like this. How dare he treat her like this? They were friends before, he _saved_ her countless times before. Now it was like nothing mattered anymore to him, throwing them away like used bandages. She bit her lip, not following his order.

Sasuke seemed to have noticed, pausing and turning around to face her. She cringed, knowing she had sparked a reaction.

He stood there like a specter, a shadow against the backdrop of cheerful lights from the village they left behind. She felt a flare of chakra, ebbing like a volatile mess before an explosion. It took a second before she saw the blue spark crackle between his fingers.

The ground shuddered as the sound of thunder blasted the air between them, her instinct kicking in when electricity surged towards her like a snake lunging at it prey. Thanking the gods he didn't seal her open points and dragging her hands up from the ground in a series of seals, she met the blistering blue wave with an updraft wind barrier howling like a storm tempest. The point of contact sizzled for a second. Then the shockwave exploded.

Rock and soil flew, sharp against her skin hadn't the remnants of her shield managed to blow them away from her. It left turgid smoke wafting away until she could make out Sasuke's form walking toward her. Gray black vapor wafted around his ankles as he stalked to her, apprehension gripping the base of her spine at the danger he posed.

He stopped before her shield, dark form towering. The dawn constellation right above his head appeared like a crown of spun crystal and light, his gray eyes watching her resolutely and indicating nothing of his intention. The barrier she erected was still glowed visibly, the wind having died down but a green haze screen still remained between them.

A smirk spread across his lips but the amusement did not touch his inexpressive eyes.

"Seems you've outgrown being such a pushover," he said, her guard failing and the green shield flickering away into the night. "I said, get up."

**ooo000ooo**

The warmth blasted his face the moment he pulled the door open, escaping into the night air as he stepped into the inn. This was at least a decent town to stop at, more people to be lost in. Also, there were less people who cared when he all but dragged Sakura back into the reaches of the sprawling houses.

Pulling off the hood of his cloak, he approached the desk and rang the bell on the table. The place was deserted from how it looked like. Couches and chairs arrayed the expanse of the first floor but no people were in sight. This was good. Less eyes to pry into business not their own. He reached out for a second time to ring the bell when a girl behind the bar straightened up with a dusty pen in hand, presumably something she was searching for on the floor.

"Oh, hullo there," she giggled, cheeks reddening at the sight of him. "Ya want a room for the night?"

It always was so easy dealing with people who couldn't look beyond a pretty face. They were incredibly gullible, most of the time witless shallow people who did not understand pretty faces could mean ugly deaths. His brother, of all people, was gifted with looks as well. Still, this time his appearance served his purpose, and he gave the girl a curt nod.

"Would that be a single bed, ser?" she asked coyly, looking up at him from beneath thick lashes with brown doe eyes. "Mayhaps I can send someone up to warm it later if you want that. Got mighty chilly past few months now and them men like it when I find... friends, for bed warmers."

She looked pretty, a common shade of pretty, but what drew his attention was the shock of bright pink hair. It was incredibly unlike Sakura's, this one dyed to an almost neon color it could blind. His former teammate had a far tamer hue he pondered, casting a glance behind him as the devil followed him into the inn and pulled off her cloak to breathe a lungful of the homey air. Pinkish white, _L__ike cherry blossoms_, as it spilled out from the wine-colored hood.

He turned his attention back to the receptionist, about to tell her they would need two beds, when her eyes widened and fixed on Sakura. It returned back to him, suspicious all of a sudden. He swallowed hard the urge to kill her where she stood.

"One bed," he said evenly the moment Sakura walked up to him. He drew her close, wrapping an arm around her waist and holding it tight without taking his eyes off the girl behind the bar. "Please."

The girl still looked uneasy as he passed ryou notes over the counter, fidgeting like a student hiding a paper note from the teacher. He ignored the fact Sakura was probably stupidly staring at him and wondering why he was doing this, but the girl knew something. How, why, he didn't need to find out, just to give her the impression nothing was wrong. Killing her would only make untidy business in a town as small as this.

He gave her a smile, so forced it hurt to make it appear genuine. His effort was rewarded with a relaxed sigh, like of a captive being released. She took the money with a flourish, still apprehensive, but more trusting. He had her now, under a different sort of manipulation.

"Two men came earlier today," multitasking and counting the money under her breath. "They had them metal things with some sorta leaf symbol. Said they was looking for a girl with pink hair. I guess they was thinking I was her, uh huh, but they rented a room instead when they saw me."

She paused when she reached the last sheaf of paper. "You staying for three days?"

Sasuke kept the smile plastered on his face. Beneath his fingers digging into his former teammate's side, he could feel quickened breathing and tense muscles. So she finally caught on too. He hoped she was as good a pretender in things like these. This was the forte of kunoichi, after all.

"We're only staying until tonight," he replied calmly. "You can keep the change." _And your life too._

She stared at Sakura, a flicker of envy shimmering beneath the tentative smile on her face. People thought Sasuke didn't know how much girls could squabble over him, but he did notice them. He only chose to ignore their frivolous antics to make his life less complicated, although it seemed the more he maneuvered society with cold shoulders the more they called for him.

"They were sayin' the girl they was looking for was kidnapped," she measured out in careful words.

He could feel how his companion tremble beneath the cloak. _Damn it, Sakura. Keep it steady._ Turning to look at her tenderly, he brushed away the tangled pink mess from her face, a warm smile for her but a stern warning all the same. Those green pools were worried as they stared back. It wasn't hard to pretend. There was always going to be a part of him before the ruin of his life who could portray such a false happiness, mocking like a mask dipped in acid.

"She's my wife," he addressed, keeping his eyes on Sakura. She was calming down. _Easy now..._

Romance was not a notion lost on him, playing the girl like a doll. Feed her misinformation and she would likely squawk it as soon to the next inquiring shinobi as quickly as she squawked to them about the search. If he was good, they'd write this off as another wrong sighting, another pink-haired girl they were not looking for. It was easier to clean than blood on kusanagi.

"I couldn't bear for her to be married off like a pawn to someone twice her age, a known drunkard who whored around. So I took her, and we ran."

The girl had been twirling the strangely colored hair around her finger and was starstruck at the idea as she listened to his tale. It was plainly written on her face, the story of a handsome man saving a helpless girl from an horrendous situation. Such stories made up ridiculous novels women always cantered to like stallions in heat and were easy to slap together to make an equally ridiculous story this innkeeper's daughter would believe. To add credence, he painfully tried to smile at her again. Konoha would all the more believe they were tracking the wrong trail.

"I knew it," she breathed airlessly, eyes alight with excitement. "I knew who they was looking for was royalty. My da tells me stories of them highborn ladies with pink hair, and he actually saw one when I was but a newborn babe. 'Tis why I color my own hair, makes me feel like I'm a princess, and all them good looking boys say they like it." She bit her lip, finger pausing from twisting her hair and training doe eyes on Sakura. "Miss, are you a princess? Or maybe a lady? Your color's have to be real, ain't it?"

The utter mortification in Sakura's face made him swallow a parsimonious laugh, instead channeling it to the misleading smirk on his lips. How stupid. Kings with pink haired daughters. His former teammate was probably only was an abomination that happened out of accident. Of course, he didn't know the girl already had notions of royalty in her shallow little head. Let her carry on then. A little nonsense wouldn't hurt.

"She is," he said at the same time Sakura answered, "It's real."

He took the keys and radiated a sickening smile, stunning the girl silent as his fingers brushed gently against her hand. Pulling Sakura up the stairs and shadows, his lips threw off the falsehoods and curled into a viperous frown.

**ooo000ooo**

Sasuke closed the door and leaned his forehead against the cool wood, slamming a hand hard against the varnished surface before curling it into a fist. Regardless of the bullshit he fed the girl, the mere fact she knew about them was not a good thing. They shouldn't have gone back in the first place. Everything would have been perfectly fine.

He heard clothes rustling when she turned, the floor boards groan as she moved toward him. He kept his head on the door.

"Sasuke-kun."

He exhaled loudly.

She didn't answer for a while then took another step closer. So abhorrently weak she still needed to rest during the day, asking to look for a fucking _inn_. He didn't know anymore how he felt about having her around, because definitely she was more trouble than her worth. If he could seal her in a scroll to keep from interacting with him at all, he would have done it without hesitation.

"Sasuke-kun," she repeated, a hand lightly falling on his shoulder.

When he turned his head to look at her she drew back slightly, jade eyes wide and worried about him. Why the hell should she even be bothering when she was the reason for all of this? She at least had the decency to look ashamed. Thin brows brought together, mouth drawn with dimples on her chin, eyes with too much emotion you couldn't pick any one out. She managed to have her own sort of unreadability it made him a bit more contemptuous. This was so _Sakura_ he wanted to lay a hand hard across those soft features to get her to stop being so open.

"What do you want?"

All the emotions on her face were contending as she tried to sort her mind out and tell him whatever she wanted to say. She had to know what shit they were in as of the moment and not talk about something senseless, as say, what had happened earlier when he called her his wife.

"If you want... want to hit me," her voice too soft and timorous, "hurt me. Whatever you want to do... do it."

_What?_

He stared. For a moment he thought he heard her wrong, but the sheepish look on her face told him otherwise. His lips flowed into a cruel smile he couldn't stop from spreading because what she suggested was so plain and obvious it warranted its own reaction. He wanted to run a hand through his face but settled for looking away at the room instead, trying not to laugh right in her face like it was the most spiteful joke. She looked more worried now.

Finally he managed to settle his eyes on her, then shook his head with a short insulting laugh.

"You don't know even know what you're asking, do you?" he told her, taking her by the soft flesh of her throat before pushing her against the door with a whimper of protest. He stayed his hand from gripping too tightly, the feel of her throbbing pulse again mocking him once more. Wide green eyes met his hard, indicting ones. He couldn't keep his hand still, not like this, as he dragged his thumb across the length of her throat with so much self control he was sure she could feel him trembling. Down slow to her collarbones, up once more to her jaw, wanting to crush between his fingers and feel her struggle to live beneath the smooth, matte skin.

As much as her hair was a strange mutation, so was she to the ninja society. Strange, yet it happens. It surprised him she still lived, but reason pointed out it must be how the Konoha system coddled and spoiled the youngsters to mere blade-wielding children which was to blame. They were nothing if they didn't break out, and he would have been one of those if he'd stayed behind.

Feeling her lashes stir lightly against his hair, he could feel her inhale sharply. "I want to get _rid _of you."

The pulse against his hand sped up, emerald irises constricting to black points on a sea of lovely, terrified green. Her eyes were the one thing he found liked about her, but it wasn't enough. Lifting his other hand from the door and standing back, he reached behind him to pull his sword free, observing his former teammate watching the blade being poised with naked horror. Her hands rose to latch onto his wrist bearing her neck against the door.

He struck, and felt the startled jump in her muscles, the racing heartbeat beneath his hand, eyes shut tight expecting the worst.

Kusanagi was stabbed deep into her shirt, the flat of the sword flush against the flesh of her side and cold like ice but not breaking skin. Slowly her eyes fluttered open and full of questions, lashes brushing against his. Releasing the firm caress from her throat, he pressed his weight against the panel beside her head and took a step back. She was caged in with his arm on one side and a sword on the other, locked with a grave obsidian stare.

"Enough complaining. The next time, you keep your mouth shut and suck it up," he disparaged in a contemptuous tone, narrowing his glare. "I have to clean up after this. Now go to sleep."

For a moment he read anger flashing in those pools of green, so quick he would have missed it hadn't he been staring at her the whole time. It morphed back into that undecipherable swirl of emotions when she moved to push his arm aside and trudged to the bed. Extracting kusanagi from the door, he sheathed it without looking back even as the rusty springs of the mattress squeaked under her weight, the sound of clothes falling to the floor. Without looking back, bedclothes rustled and she moved beneath the sheets.

Not _wanting_ to look back, he twisted the knob and stepped out.

**ooo000ooo**

Outside, he took a deep breath to rid his lungs of the building's musty air. When he exhaled, his breath came out as a puff of white fog quickly disintegrating into the gentle wind. The climate was changing but it didn't bother him. He was used to it. Sakura, though, was another matter. If only he hadn't heeded her whines, they wouldn't have drawn unwanted attention.

Taking long, slow strides down the street he couldn't help pulling the hood of the cloak higher around his neck. He was accustomed to this environment, but the wind bit into his skin as he delved into the crush of people haggling and hawking in the market square.

"Excuse me," said a man, completely blocking his way. "I think you dropped something."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed at him, his hand automatically moving to his sword under the cover of his cloak. His shadow loomed ominous against the bright blue sky above. If he dropped something, he should know.

"It's not mine," he answered, stepping to the right and deftly moving around the man in front of him in an attempt to thwart whatever he was planning. He was pretty big, thick muscles and a bit of fat, chunky around his midriff. He was physically strong, Sasuke knew. If he was a brigand or a robber, this would not be pretty.

"I said," the man continued, placing a beefy hand on his shoulder to stop him. "I think you dropped something."

Sasuke reacted, eyes narrowing at the heavy weight laid on his shoulder, and then reached with his other hand to push it off. The instant he touched the other man, his arm was grabbed with such a force Sasuke thought it possible to be in Sakura's league. The Uchiha was pushed forward as it twisted into a mercy grip. All that in a matter of seconds, and the people who were milling around them had not bothered to notice. No one probably saw it, nor would they care.

"So your muscles aren't all show," he said cynically. He couldn't possibly try to free his hand without causing a commotion. Sending a surge of electricity would be too brazen and was sure to expose them all the more. "Who are you?"

"You don't need to know who I am, but I know who you are," answered the man, a glint of teeth. "And don't bother trying to do anything funny. You're the younger Uchiha."

The sureness of the tone used almost made Sasuke laugh. This man was dense enough to not know he was dangerous. Yet, he still needed to know the nature of this person, however much he wished he could slay at will. Being surefooted now they were so close to Orochimaru, it was a step he needed to take to ensure no one followed them. The one holding him could be a missing nin, a Konoha ninja, anyone who had a glimpse at his face and name including headhunters. The way he was held made it seem he was at the disadvantage here.

"What do you want?" he asked instead.

They needed to move to a more secluded place. Whoever this man was, he made sure his catch wouldn't be able to make a loud nor easy exit. Covering his tracks after would be a pain he didn't want to waste time on.

The man grinned, looking down at him. That very same look made the hairs stand at the back of his neck. "Do you know where Haruno-san is?"

The unease he felt about the situation now settled, Sasuke keeping a stoic appearance and taming his chakra which had turning violent. _That fast, huh? _It wouldn't do to be rash. If they were discovered quickly, then this too can end as quickly.

"No," he replied, even and choosing. "I wasn't even near your village recently."

"Do you know what happens to liars?" The man _tsked_, scraggly facial hair following his words. "I send them to hell."

The continuous flow of carts, pets and various livestock around them diverted away the attention of those who happened to glimpse them, making them go unseen in the midst of people. And the noise. It drowned out their conversations until no one could hear them clearly, merchants waggling their tongues for their wares and customers haggling their throats raw. Either way, he loses. If he fights, news will reach Konoha through word of witnesses' mouth. If he runs, news will reach Konoha through this man.

"Right," he responded, trying to find a better way to get away _and_ keep this shinobi quiet. He could either be merely a self-assured braggart or he had something to back up his presumptuous attitude toward the last Uchiha. He can find out later, when they were out of the town's eye.

"Is she your little girlfriend, that's why you're hiding her?"

"I knew her, but she's not with me. She's not my problem."

"Ooh, really? She's a pretty lass, if you ask me. You sure you're not hiding her somewhere?" he continued with a nasty laugh. "You little punks think you can do away without asking first. Hokage-sama's sick with worry, you know?"

He gritted his teeth. Tsunade was on to them. He should have know the risk was there when Sakura told him where she lived. There was no other option now but to kill this informant. The girl at the inn told him there were two people who were looking for them, but if this man had any other companions, he couldn't sense their presence.

"It's none of my business," he replied icily. "Now let me go."

"Oh, but it is, boy," the man chuckled. "You're still wanted in Konoha. I'm gonna take you home."

It wasn't his home. _At least, not anymore._ He kept silent, but with a sharp tug managed to get his hand free from the sweaty grasp as he turned around to glare at the man. He'd make sure to rip out his tongue, just in case.

"Oho, you're good," sounding amused but he didn't seem impressed. "Like a snake. A traitorous, ungrateful snake."

"If you're done, I'll be on my way."

Those piggy black eyes were searching his face, scrutinizing closely. Suddenly he was grinning, revealing a row of white gleaming teeth.

"Well, okay then," he said slowly. "Has anyone told you, you got a pretty face?"

Sasuke blanched, anger and revulsion draining blood from his face. An unbidden image flashed through his mind for only a split second, but it was enough to burn. _You fucking disgust me._

"Yeah, that's right," the man continued, grin widening at his reaction. "You even look prettier than most girls. Say, I give you a proposal. Let's go somewhere private, and I can tell 'em back in Konoha I didn't see you."

He was growing angrier the more he talked, trying not to remember. He had to struggle against slashing through this old pervert with a chidori right then and there. Of all things, he hadn't expected this to come up. As repulsive as the situation was, he knew he could find some silver lining in there somewhere. A hidden place, free from prying eyes. This fool wouldn't even know he'd be dead before he can lay his hand on him again.

A mask of placidity drew up to hide his shock, as much neutrality as he could muster at the moment. This would be another kill he didn't mind making. Konoha would thank him if they knew.

"Why not?" An immoral smirk appeared even as he tasted bile. "I choose where."

**ooo000ooo**

The door softly clicked shut behind him.

When his eyes adjusted in the dark, he saw Sakura lying almost to the edge of the bed, deep asleep with the curtains drawn to a close. Shrugging out of the dusty cloak and sitting at the foot of the bed, he felt weary. Emotions were the bane of his existence, of that much he was sure. Even as he pulled off his sandals and loosened his belt, he was aware he needed to forget things—things that were part of him—especially when he dealt with the dregs of humanity. The man earlier was just pathetic. His brother, he was the different one.

Sliding into the sheets beside his former teammate, the one who spent all her shame and embarrassment on him, he pulled her close until her back was firm against his chest. She didn't wake. There were deeper secrets he had now which he did not intend to let her know, but for now he needed stability.

They were good like this until nightfall.

* * *

_Dusk._


	4. IV: Violence and Vanilla

Again, I'm glad to have finished this sucker. Well, I had originally hoped to stick in some more horrible stuff about Sasuke's flashbacks but I decided the word count limited me. Haha, sorry. Gosh. Originally I decided against adding notes at the end of the chapters, but then I couldn't resist for this one. You'll understand when you read through this.

Usually when I'm writing the chapter a lot of things pop into my head of what to say to you readers, but then when it gets to the time where I actually would post it, suddenly my head's empty. Hm. I wonder why.

Let me just start off to say that in 2006, people thought Sasuke was horribly evil here. Suddenly, the manga took a twist and now he's more in canon than ever before. Funny how things turn out. :D Enjoy!

**UPDATE (9-19-12): **So yes, I screwed up a very small, but VERY MAJOR detail. A lot of you guys noticed that Sakura was suddenly blonde. -sigh- Stupid me. I fixed it now. Well, yes, there is a reason why and I hope I've fixed this properly. The edit is in the part right after the flashback.

* * *

**Gods of Vindication  
**Part IV: Violence and Vanilla

"_Don't speak, I know what you're thinking, and I don't need your reasons_…_ don't tell me 'cause it hurts_…_"_

* * *

When Sakura opened her eyes, it struck her how the light glowing through the curtains was the orange of sunsets and Naruto's clothes. _Hm. How would he like it to know Sasuke came back. _The room felt a bit stuffier than usual from the heat of day, radiating from the window and making her feel like she was made of lead. Eyes half open, she wondered whether Sasuke had returned, lethargic and partly conscious. In trying to turn and lie on her back, a weight registered to her across her waist, as heavy as her heart and inadvertently linked into something she pressed up against. Someone.

Cheeks burning in the heat of the room and the realization, she tried to look at what was pinning her down. She was met with only the sight of the blanket.

Her suddenly movement must have woken him up as he stirred, his body cradling her from behind, a deep sigh breathing against her back. It felt strange as he adjusted, arm clenching tighter around her midriff, pelvis pressing into her hips as he leaned his weight into her, a knee snugly firm behind one of her own, her feet unintentionally exploring the feel of his at her soles. Everything was too physically present, the sensation being beside him, _everything..._

Confusion was the least of what bothered her. This was _Sasuke_. He did not do close, he did not do physical. He was always so cold and distant and would fuck up anyone who invaded his privacy back when they were genins that no one didn't dare get close to him. Except Naruto, that is. It was so strange to imagine he would be there sleeping so near, to be willing to lay there beside her, to hold her, _keep_ on holding her like there nothing more natural in the world. This wasn't too different, but the warmth of his body behind her was so disarming she didn't know how to react.

"Sak," was breathed into her ear and she stiffened, all sleep driven from her as the muggy air of the room sweltered them, burying them beneath the heat and thick layers of the blanket. Breathing through her mouth, she pretended she didn't hear him. It felt too hot and she wanted to kick free from the sheets, yet encased in his arms, she froze. "I know you're awake, Sakura."

The way he said her name made her feel weak. She hated him for being able to single handedly destroy any will she had, no matter how long she pondered to stick to it. She made a vow to never back down if it came to facing him, but when he showed the slightest interest in her, the tiniest amount of humanity surfacing his cruel exterior, she'd crumble beneath his fingers and be that pathetic, sniveling Sakura who couldn't do anything before him. All the time he wasn't there she tried building up resolve to finally stand up to him, yet when it came time for confrontation there was nothing she could do to stop him from whatever he wanted to do with her. It was a bitter truth she couldn't accept.

Turning her head around to look at him, she was met with ubiquitous gray eyes as heavy lidded as hers had been moments ago. There was an eerie serenity in his features that, for a moment, returned her back to how she felt originally for one Uchiha Sasuke. Naive and innocent was how she loved him, but so raw and bottomless and limitless, so full of hope that he'd return her feelings back and her heart soaring every time he spent effort for her.

Her hand slid over his arm and latched onto it but his expression did not change, and she gathered the courage to continue and pull herself to sit up against the headboard. She closed her eyes, wanting to bury her face in her hands. He was everything she wanted. He was everything she _shouldn't_ be wanting.

"It's still early," she told him, not knowing what else to say.

The air still heavy and uncomfortable, he said nothing. When she pushed to finally move the blanket off of them, the smooth underside of its heavy material silkily sliding against her hand, she gave it a forceful jerk away to the foot of the bed.

Blood everywhere.

**ooo000ooo**

The look on her face was incredibly fascinating as she practically shot out of his arms, tumbling off the side of the bed with a gasp and wide forest eyes filled with horror.

That was it. Be scared. Be fucking terrified. Be herself as she took in what he fully was capable of. He had no qualms in what he did as long as it was of his own choosing. No one forced his hand in this, and he wanted her to see what it meant to be Uchiha Sasuke, the bloodshed and the suffering that came with his last name. She wouldn't be able to know what it was like unless she realized she was going to be dragged into hell and beyond if she stayed with him, and he was going to make damn sure she stayed true to him for every minute of it. There was no saying what could happen with Orochimaru, but the sannin was highly intelligent and would know Sasuke wouldn't go down without a fight.

For a few more seconds she sat shocked on the floor, half of the comforter dragged down underneath her with the other end pulled off from the upper half of his body, exposing the crimson stains. It was sprayed on his shirt, his chest, handprints soaked into the sheets where he had crawled towards her, drops in his hair soaked on the pillow, smudged where they had lain, smeared even on her undershirt where he drew close to her in their sleep and gripped her tightly. Blood everywhere, dried to a mottled shade of brownish red.

_Take it in._

He merely lay there watching her, draped in his clan's colors, drinking in the distress of his former teammate. Soon she would run, escape like she always did, try to find a safe place, away from him, away from...

"Are you hurt!?"

His smirk froze when she suddenly drew forward upon the shock wearing off, palms invoked onto his chest, worry etched into her features while searching for a wound that wasn't there. It was unnerving to see the blood streaked across the pink swatch of hair where he inhaled the lingering scent of her shampoo in early hours, mattress shifting as she returned kneeling to his side. A burst of deja vu breezed through him in the intense heat of the room, like of death mirrors and ice needles.

Hands flitted over his skin, her face angry and distraught as she finally clamped down a palm on his forehead, healing warmth pulsating through him. Even without his sharingan to see, he knew what she was doing.

When the feeling died, Sakura's eyes were looking back down at him, eyebrows drawn together. Her energy had finally calmed down.

"No wounds. What happened?" she asked softly, unflinchingly.

He lay silent, watching her from where he lay, finding the pillow comfortable at his neck. He did not expect that. He did not expect her to be accepting of this, not scared of what he could do, what he _wanted_ to do, his bloodstained hands plain in sight yet she did not run. Was this her strength? Was this was Orochimaru needed from her? Is this what fascinated that old man so much?

Come to think of it, she never ran away. Whatever happened to him, whatever he turned into, she always remained. Wave country and Zabuza and Haku, the Forest of Death. She stayed by him, and until the very end on that cold night, she stood there in the middle of the path and...

His hands clenched.

"In the bathroom. I left something for you on the sink," he told her stiffly, her tired green eyes still warm on him.

She sat there silently and he wanted to shove her out of the way to march out of the room. He had been doing everything to extinguish whatever remained of her in his life but it seemed she was determined to stay.

"Sasuke," she kept those hands on his chest, "did you... want this to happen?"

_What if I told you I _loved_ it? _She even ignored what he just said. Of course, everything broadcasting blood and death would demand her attention. She was a medic, after all. Would she learn to hate him if he admitted what she was asking? That he did not feel the least bit remorse when kusanagi's blade bit into that Leaf chunnin vest? He did not flinch? Did not turn away? Did not hesitate?

"This much blood," his former teammate continued, him watching as her eyes slid down to his chest and shirt where most of the stain remained. He didn't let her finish her train of thought.

"He bled like a stuck pig," he interjected simply, the furrow between her eyebrows appearing on the smooth skin.

"Did you _like_ it?" she pressed. This wasn't going to go anywhere good should this conversation mature.

"No," he lied brusquely, pushing her hands off him. "Now get into the bathroom before I make you."

Wordlessly obedient she stood up, a few more lingering seconds watching him. It was in how she moved away from him, how she got up off the bed, how she tore her those wide green eyes away from him. She was accusing him, judging him even though she did not know what happened, what he did, why he did it. She dared be condescending at such a time yet try to play to his good side by staying put and following his orders, walking over listlessly to the bathroom.

He closed his eyes to the world. He might end up hurting her again should he dwell on this. He kept telling himself to hold on for the rest of this journey. By the end of this she'd be taken off his hands and be his problem no longer. She would...

The door closed with a bang, too loud in the silence of the room. He found himself gritting his teeth and he tried to relax, breathing in the warm dank air, releasing the tension from his hands but leaving behind the signs of his frustration as crescents on his palms. She was _not_ worth this.

**~x~**

_It began with touch. His hand skimming over his, lingering too long in dressing his bandages, too light, too heavy, too _triggering_ to not mean anything. Disgust roiled in his belly but he decided this was nothing. It was his mistake. Touches, condescending words._

_He brought out the worst in the Uchiha, stoking hatred and negative feelings. In fact, he was the beginning of the manipulation soon to be ingrained in his personality._

_"Sasuke-kun, please keep still."_

_His early responses were out of anger, slapping his hand away whenever he tried to reach closer, shouting vulgarities in his face, all to get away. This was not supposed to happen, this was just some horrible nightmare—_

**~x~**

He opened obsidian irises to the sound of the bathroom door opening and Sakura emerging through the doorway with a basin full of water in her arms. A hand towel was slung over a shoulder, her face concentrated in not trying to splash the liquid over the edges as she made her way across the room, carefully setting it down on the bedside table then using its weight to push the lampshade and clock out of the way. The digital timer flipped, a click for a change of numbers signalling a minute passed. When those eyes too big for her face returned to his form on the bed, he could see the full effect on her appearance.

Her hair was wet and clung to her nape, around her face as it dripped around her damp shoulders fresh from a shower. For an eternal second she stood there unperturbed, holding his gaze with the emerald in her eyes standing out even more, almost luminous, against the washed strands of her hair in a stark white blonde hue. The silvery tangles clung to the smooth skin of her face and he realized he was staring. The dye, something as simple as dark liquid in a bottle, had bleached out the pink in her hair, bleached out her very identity.

When she moved to resume her seat beside him he subdued the powerful clench in his chest and watched her take the washcloth and submerge it into the enamel basin. Meticulous and proper, so clean cut. She was focusing at the mess instead of him, pressing the rough fabric against his face and avoiding meeting his eyes. He allowed himself this opportunity to take in the sight of her. At a glance no one would recognize Sakura, now camouflaged in the open. No more searches for missing pink haired ninjas to be keeping tabs on.

As she guided the towel across his skin unmaliciously, firmly pressing down into the dried blood on his chest, he kept searching her face. The dark stain still was mussed into her undershirt, contrasting against the cream color. Trailing into the hollow between his collarbones, the towel dipped through the curves of his throat and her fingers brushed his skin. He silently mused how her identity was so rooted into the color of her hair. So much so as she scoured off the remnants of his kill, Sakura seemed a completely different person.

A tingle returned to twist in the pit of his stomach when she continued working without a word passing her lips, as silent as he was, time and again soaking the cloth into the cold water and rinsing it, bit by bit erasing the sign of his malignant impulse. It was like she was in a trance. She was _different_, and it was all his doing. He had no other ill intentions when he put half a mind of taking a bottle of dye from a hawking merchant, randomly choosing whatever he first touched. He did not expect _this_, the uncharacteristic beating in his chest, of trying to keep his breathing relaxed and measured.

Sasuke let her finish in tranquil mood, letting her pull him up to sit as she dragged off the soiled shirt off his shoulders, letting her pass the cloth over and around his neck a final time. She was too drawn to concentrating on her task that either she was playing ignorant, or she hadn't noticed he was close enough to breach the intimate distance with an accidental turn of the head.

In deciding to find out Sasuke found himself looping a lock of wet gold hair around his finger, knowing it would only grow even lighter as it dried, his knuckles grazing her cheek and drawing a sharp intake of breath against the back of his hand. Those large clear eyes were all at once trained on him, suddenly aware of their closeness and Sakura was instantly herself again, freezing in place. The towel was cold and wet against his shoulder, but her hand over it was warm.

She looked ethereal, pale skin and silvery gold hair, no sign of a day of training on her frame, huge pools of green seemingly the only splash of color on her as she sat beside him only in her undershirt and black shorts. Vaguely he wondered how many times must she have imagined what it felt to kiss him fully on the mouth, his dark gray gaze falling to pink tinged lips. He never noticed them before, the pink of her hair previously drawing all attention away from everything else. Now it wasn't any longer... and only her mouth was pink, and he couldn't find it in him to resist as he wanted badly to look away. Was this...

_Is this how you felt before?_ he soundlessly asked her, coiling the ringlet tighter, cutting into his skin. This feeling, that unnatural nervousness in his belly urging him to bridge that gap between them, he disliked it immensely. It was powerful. It consumed all thought and left no room for reason. She would not become his downfall because she was nothing but a distraction he needed to get rid of at the soonest. Giving in to such yearnings would only deter him because Sakura wasn't in his plan. She had _never_ been in his plan. But maybe just this once, just a _taste_...

Once again doubt angrily reared in him. Was this Orochimaru's reason for asking to bring her to him? Was she the wrench in his gears, to stall and make him forget his purpose so his body would finally belong to the sannin?

He could smell fear and he wanted to ask her what it she saw in him that made her keep staying when she wasn't even sure about his intentions. She was matching his opposing emotions with apprehension and was sitting stock still, unable to decide what to do. Keeping her out of pocket, shoving her away every time she got closer was currently what he had in mind. Her powerful sense of unbending faith in his words were the most he could manipulate her with, showing her just enough compassion to keep her interested and stay isolated from Orochimaru's other influences. Whatever he had, all he could control in her, they never would be able to match that. In there lay the way to control her, watching her tremble as his knuckles traced beneath her lower lip.

There was nothing else telling him as clearly as this that she was his, his thoughts ravaging possession on her being. _Mine. _Sakura tried to move away from him but the lock of her hair fastened around his finger drew taut, the gold curl acting like an anchor keeping her secure where she sat. _All mine._

"Whatever happens when we get there," he whispered, the cold washcloth sliding down his back like the scales of a snake but her warm hands remaining firmly pressed against his shoulders, "your loyalties belong to me."

For a moment her silence pervaded the air and confusion in her viridian irises filled his vision. Then her lips ever so slightly lifted at the side and a small smile made its way into her eyes, catching him unawares. Without thinking his first instinct was to hurt her, the brazenness to _smile_ about this making him want to crush it with his tongue and teeth. The scent of the inn's soap on his former teammate's skin filled his senses, the exposed shoulder urging for a bite into the soft flesh. Anything to inflict pain on her. He hated her, he _hated_...

"I'll always." clear green eyes sliding down to her hair anchored to him, calmly speaking, "choose to stay with you."

**ooo000ooo**

The brambles snagged at Sasuke's cloak the way he was sure it was ripping into hers. In the dark path toward one of the hideouts Sound used, he went on, ignoring the negligible stings. They were close.

Turning his head minutely towards his former teammate, he assessed her petite form moving smoothly beside him in the dark, a hand held out in front of her face to keep from running into a tree. He had been so close to losing it with her earlier, the blood still coursing hotly in his veins at how he could have grabbed her by the hair and brutally taken out his anger on her. _Emotions do not control you_, he told himself, watching her closely, newly discolored hair almost glowing in what little light they went by on their way. In a way she had changed, no longer the Sakura from before, but still a part of her old self remained.

When her eyes flicked towards him, noticing him watching her, he looked away as casually as he could and ignored the prickling feeling at the back of his neck. _Emotions do not control you_, his new mantra. The entrance to the hideout was just up ahead, and as they stepped into the clearing, his senses heightened sharply.

His mistake would be rectified immediately if he wanted things to go smoothly. He didn't need another distraction, because any more at this point would—

"SASUKE!"

He felt the presence before he heard the voice. Red and passion and energy hurtled toward him and his instincts caught up, his hands clamping down on slender wrists that were intended to be thrown around his neck. She was so goddamn irritating.

"Sasuke, you're finally here!" Karin's smooth voice full of emotion spilled over them, "I was so worried."

She moved closer, tipping on her toes, moving her lips closer toward him and with a quick motion he grabbed her waist, pushing her back. Her unpredicted appearance here was not a good sign at any rate. Her capabilities as a powerful sensory tracker was very well known to him, and the reason he had her picked out for joining him in his future assault against Orochimaru, and it was clear she would have felt him far longer than he'd noticed her. Her perceptiveness and very keen antics for being an actress were things he could see through, because it also meant she would have felt Sakura's presence along with his.

"I'm with someone," he stressed to the redhead, scarlet eyes behind glasses wistfully still trained at him. She had enough courtesy to pretend to be surprised, and moved away from him to peek behind his shoulder the same time he turned around.

Sakura had a weary expression on her face, but he was sure of the fire in her eyes, indignant, undoubtedly provoked. A graceful blonde eyebrow was arched and a tight smile quirked at her lips. Disdain and probably contempt at what she had just witnessed. If there was any truth to what she had been telling him, showing him all this time, he would not be surprised.

Karin was the more subtle of the two, he realized, as he assessed the belittling once over she gave his former teammate. She continued to push her familiarity with him in the blonde's face, laying a hand on his arm and speaking as if she weren't around.

"I'm sorry, Sasuke, I didn't know," she gave him a shy smile, her cheeks reddening in the sunset light. "I guess her chakra was so weak I couldn't feel it."

His former teammate laughed heartily and flashed a show of teeth, a fake smile that caused a deep chill in his bones to see her this way. This was not Sakura. At least, not the one he knew.

"I'm the one who should be sorry," she said after a while, opening her gleaming emerald eyes, "I'm Sakura. You are?"

She stepped forward, a hand reaching out from the depths of her wine colored cloak towards Karin. In slow motion she opened her palm, empty and held out for a handshake. This was an unenthusiastically mature move of hers, he realized. But as the moment where his teammate was taken aback, Sakura's mask betrayed her and showed great turmoil before it disappeared, and then he knew he would have bigger problems coming soon in dealing with both of them together.

Watching their hands meet together lightly, fingers careful speaking volumes of how each of them was too cautious to show their real feelings, they both could not hide from him what he had been trained for all his years to read. Graceful smiles on their lips but blazing disquiet in emerald and crimson eyes. He was caught in the middle, the gears in his head shutting down for the moment because it was too much spontaneous events muddling his plans.

He sighed audibly, catching both their attentions. They needed a break. _He_ needed a break from this. Orochimaru was incredibly good at predicting what he was planning, he wouldn't be surprised to know if the sannin would simply backstab him after all of this effort.

"We're staying here for the night."

**ooo000ooo**

A very pregnant and awkward air had come to settle over the campfire they setup by the ruins of the hideout. On the other edge of the fire Sasuke could see her quiet in the sleeping bag faced in his direction, huge eyes closed and that leather bound notebook still clutched in her small hands lying by her side. She had remained too polite with Karin's presence, too quiet and tense ever since he blew the flames to life and while they ate a sordidly cold meal from what they could find in the torched hideout.

Beneath the awnings of a blasted wall was where they sought shelter for the rest of the evening, at least what remained of it. Soot had claimed debris everywhere, the redhead describing powerful explosions rocking and effectively annihilating the base.

He leaned against the flat of the wall behind him, the place the cleanest they could find, and pinched the bridge of his nose, a headache threatening to take full effect. The two girls had bickered earlier about the source of the damage, because Karin had mentioned red clouds on flapping black coats that boiled his blood. She assured him Itachi had not been present, yet he remained cautious and distrustful. In describing the appearance of the pair who appeared from the horizon on a great winged creature, his Konoha cohort was quick to point out she knew the fair haired persona with a blond ponytail.

Their sharp exchange of words had begun there and he cursed how they both agitated him so. Such shallow insecurities had immediately bubbled to the surface, Karin unwilling to admit that Sakura had much more information on the Akatsuki duo—thus was the one he was preferring to listen to—and Sakura so gleeful that she was underhandedly rubbing it in the redhead's face like some juvenile dolt.

Regardless of how he was impressed at how she rose to taunt instead of being the one walked all over, their quickly escalating conversation still ringed true of the childishness at fighting over him. Their squabbling had been put to a halt once he raised his own voice, sternly glaring at the two of them. His former teammate had hung her head in silent shame and the current one glared back before huffily going about looking for food.

The powerful stench of burnt earth was eminent. He had been watching Sakura's sleeping form for a while now, and Karin had taken advantage of his contemplation to take up residence beside him. A hand on his arm, an arm around his shoulder, the smell of lip gloss registering just a moment too late.

His reflexes grabbed her by the shoulders as he leaned away, gray eyes darkening at the sight of her naked scarlet irises, her eyeglasses discarded at her sleeping back. Uchiha Sasuke did not know how he was supposed to respond but he felt nothing. All the times she pulled these on him, he felt nothing.

"Karin," he intoned flatly. He could taste cherry on his lips.

The redhead rolled her eyes, smiling as she sighed and pulled back. He wondered why she never had the capacity to take into account his personal space. She did not seem to have that problem with Suigetsu. Or Juugo, especially. She was as naive as Sakura was in this aspect, unable to determine the hazards of a person properly. He would just have to keep silent until the need to expel her arises. She was still useful. And at the moment, he needed her more in his plan than he needed his blonde companion.

"She's asleep," she pointed out, leaning on the wall beside him. "What would she know, anyway?"

He gave her another long, hard look, their wills speaking silently on their own until a conclusion had been made. She gave in, as she always did when it was him, giving another exaggerated sigh as she made to move to her own sleeping bag.

"Okay fine," she said, pausing for a while as she looked at him over her shoulder and gave him a tender look, expression softening. "I owe you this. But I'll be there to protect you still when we meet up with Orochimaru-sama."

"Aa."

"You know you'll need me when he's around."

Sasuke remained quiet until she pulled her covers up to sleep, drawing the back of his hand over his mouth. Her lipgloss was too sweet. When his gaze lingered over towards the sleeping blonde, piercing green irises stared back at him from behind the flickering fire. His heart lurched.

For a few seconds Sakura stared at him, making him wonder why he felt he had committed some sort of indiscretion and was caught, abhorring the sick, guilty feeling washing into his chest. Suddenly she broke into a silent laugh. His lips thinned into a line when she, too, turned her back on him. That single look from her made him freeze.

_Sakura._ He glared at the tousled blonde hair spilling on her pillow and the black leather notebook. He must have imagined it. That had to be it.

* * *

**AN:** Does Sasuke have a thing for blondes? I have no idea. xD


	5. V: Darkest Honor

(Re-Written Version)

Previous notes stated that Hebi is formed. And that Sakura does not have a definite past in canon. Take that any way you want. ;)

Yes. Yes, I see all of you, followers and reviewers alike. I do try to respond to everyone but sometimes it's just not possible. Others are anonymous, some have PMs turned off. However, be assured that I love gloating over your reviews because I get to read them in the middle of the muck of my work. xD And I just love them.

I just had to update this in place of my other story's update, because something had gone so wrong and files went missing. So hey, I finished this! Nee-han93, ParagonAnna, AdotD, abriel, sunxkissed'starr, sundance1989, imaginary, Hersheys, shkh4ever, Fist Of Fire, Haiichan94, SabrineSabrine, BloodyGirl, BlackRose2142, Who's Name Is War, Anoni Mos, C.A.M.E.O.1 and Only, 2oatmealcookies... you guys are all just LOVE. I hope the blonde thing was cleared up, haha. It was my bad, seriously.

Here's the update. If you catch any typos or loopholes or something wrong, please copy-paste to me the sentence it's in so I know where to find and correct it. :D Comments, complaints, and harrassments are all very welcome.

**Disclaimer:** Nothing is mine.

* * *

**Gods of Vindication  
**Part V: Darkest Honor

"_And I don't want the world to see me, 'cause I don't think that they'd understand…"_

* * *

Snow. Before them spanned an immaculate white landscape, a sprawling rural town caught in the middle of a never ending winter as they viewed the expanse from an overhanging cliff a good distance away. Sasuke had heard of the existence of this place, yet never been here before. The glaring cleanness was everywhere, blanketing the ground in a thick, white swathe of ice crystals glinting in pale sunlight. Gray wisps curled out of smokestacks, and they were close enough to see ant sized people milling about brick streets and muddy slush. The settlement was in no aspect small, stretching far out on either side of their vantage point. How his mentor got wind of this place, he would never know.

"Wow," breathed Sakura behind him taking in the view, "it's beautiful."

"Of course, honey," replied the redhead's sultrier voice, sounding proud, "nothing but the best for Orochi-sama."

Sasuke remained quiet at the term his teammate used. The town made him fairly uneasy. The largeness did not deter from the fact it was a civilian village. Under no circumstances were they going to be able to productively train in this place. Whatever the sannin had in mind for his now-blonde companion all the more nagged at his suspicions.

"I thought you knew where he stayed?" he asked, turning around to face the two but directing his question to Karin. "Why are we still here?"

"He just told me to come here," she answered, playing with her scarf as she tried to concentrate. He knew she was focusing, searching using her special skill as she closed her eyes. "He said he'd meet us."

It was so like him to not want to be caught off guard. That old man always was too cautious and he doubted there would be any other way he could outwit him other than a head to head battle. Of course, seeing as he was taught everything by the sannin, he would need to come up with a couple underhanded tactics to be able to slip away from his slithering den of snakes. His revenge would not be in vain.

"I can feel Kabuto."

He followed her gaze as all three of them turned away from the village and the edge of the cliff, looking to see for a shadow of the medic nin in the forest of evergreens. He felt a frown try to pinch at his mouth but kept his face impassive. Out of the white, too-perfect background he appeared between the trees, walking up to them wrapped up in a heavy beige coat and snow crunching beneath his feet. The edges of his glasses, like Karin's, were fogging up but those blank, mocking eyes remained clear.

The Uchiha's onyx glare hardened. He was about to open his mouth and deliver a scathing demand when following after the medic was the sannin. When he turned to the redhead to wonder if she had deliberately said nothing, she was in as much surprise as he was, albeit more pleasant about it.

"Orochimaru-sama."

Tall and pale, the illustrious sheen of black hair caught idly falling snowflakes as he practically floated towards them like a ghost. His earrings became visible each time the wind blew his glossy hair back, reflecting gold winks when it caught the morning light. Something was different. Something was definitely wrong. There was no sign of the evil, conniving smile he almost always wore, instead a neutrally calm expression taking its place. The sannin he had known, dark and disgusting and jeering, was not present, but Sasuke would rather believe he could be hiding it. One could not always tell with this man.

When the two stopped before them, before Karin and Sakura, but watching those glittering eyes long enough, they were solely focused on him. His hunch was noticeably gone, full height palpable and the violet markings around his eyes the only seeming splash of color on his person. That small gesture was his acknowledgment, the spreading sickening grin his reward of a job well done. A wordless meeting of the mind was enough, a look of shared understanding enough.

The pressure of his golden sinister gaze flickered to his former teammate a foot in front of him and wearing his mother's wine colored cloak, the symbol of his past whose pink tresses he had defaced hidden in the hood. Orochimaru had merely told him not to hurt her. Nothing was said about him tarnishing the kunoichi.

"Ah, you're here," the sannin gestured with a slender arm wide open to her.

Sasuke could feel the tightness in her shoulders himself, see her flexing fingers into tight balls. Too obvious, very easily hostile. His teammate had also picked up on it and was closely watching every muscle movement as indifferently as the redhead could. He could not blame her, though, even though he wanted to. Here was the man who attacked their team in the mad crush of the Forest of Death, attacked the village, and singlehandedly murdered the Kazekage and Hokage at the time. And he had taunted Naruto's pathetic growth the last time they ran chasing after him. She was protective of that idiot, wasn't she?

Long, spindly digits stretched forward in a shadow of what she had presented Karin the night before, a gesture of keeping your enemy close. His smile was something truly, disturbingly his and chilled him though he was not its recipient as it focused intently on Sakura, a pale hand reaching out for a handshake. For a moment she paused, staring down ambiguously at the action, before she slowly lifted her own slender palm. In a swift movement before their hands met, she slapped it away, emerald eyes blazing as she glared up at Orochimaru.

"You fucking bitch!"

The high pitched voice rang through the icy air. It took him a split second to grab Karin around the waist, his body reacting instinctively and lunging away to the side as she reached arms over his shoulder in a last attempt to seize at his former teammate. Kabuto's short "Ha!" was all he heard when he felt a brutal jerk snagging in his attempt to separate the redhead from the other girl, a yelp of surprise behind them.

Turning his head back, he was met with the sight of Sakura on the ground, the girl he was holding managing to seize the hood of the dark coat, still gripping it tightly, knuckles white. _Fuck._ They were really so goddamn annoying. He could only see the back of her fiery hair but not the redhead's reaction. Sakura's furious scowl was all that occupied his vision, light gold hair messed with the powder white of snow in her face. She looked livid, like a wild animal.

"How dare you do that to Orochimaru-sama!"

"What would a cunt like you know!?" she snapped back, breathing ragged and swift. He knew at once what was meant, doubting the redhead would know.

"You have no right!"

"That is enough," came the icy demarcation of the sannin to the exchange, his darkly feminine voice enough to quell the two as all heads turned toward him. Sasuke could feel a strange unsettling in in his bones. The old man no longer looked as composed as earlier, his mistrustful smirk having slid off and replaced with a firm line of disapproval, and he dared to think a disturbing aberration suffused into his features. There was a tightness ringing those snake slit irises, and when the Uchiha slowly followed his line of sight, silently swallowed the lump in his throat.

He was glaring. Definitely. Nothing could deny him that, as his teacher watched his former teammate, he was hiding something turbulent beneath his exterior. The girl on his shoulder suddenly was breathing hard, as livid as the one at his feet.

"But she was going to—"

"I said _enough_," interjected Orochimaru, not taking his eyes off their now-blonde companion. For a moment Sasuke could imagine Karin continuing, her hands trembling as if they couldn't release their hold on the thick cloth.

"_Karin_," he muttered.

It seemed forever before she finally let go, shoulders and arms slackening. Then flinging the material toward's the blonde's face. Twisting, he shoved Karin off his shoulder farther away from the girl on the ground to place his body between them. The naked red anger leaking off her fueled his own. That last move was irritatingly childish, a flaying strongly appealing to him. Turning back to Sakura, he realized she did not turn away from Orochiimaru, but those small hands curled, crunching in the snow.

She was not in her own element here, surrounded by enemies leaving her kneeling, and one not as good at controlling her reactions as the rest. His action of saving her from his teammate's wrath was merely to keep her under wraps, so incredibly immature. But it did not save her from the fact that she too had the same brand of kid reflexes causing this to fall on her. More emotion than reason. He was maddeningly disappointed in her. Fathoming this scenario from happening had not been what he anticipated. This was simply unacceptable.

He was about to step towards her, to roughly pull her to her feet because she looked so chaotically trodden over, when the sannin made his move before he could do so. Sleek and agile, the tall man moved forward, black cloak hanging on his slim frame like a sheet as he stooped over to take Sakura's hands in his and helping her up. She behaved. The mix of emotions on her face, cheeks rouged red from the frost and hostile viridian irises, probably mirrored his own. He didn't know, didn't care.

When those long fingers raked back the mess of blonde hair back to her scalp, he could not come to terms with the fear suddenly gripping him. Realization enlightened by those arms, those _arms_. There was no problem with those arms. He could use them seemingly without any pain. Orochimaru had told him to take his former teammate back, sick and in agony on his throne of granite and limestone, arms dead and decaying as black worthless stumps.

Obsidian eyes narrowed suspiciously at the alien expression of hidden disbelief on the sannin's face. _What do you have in mind for her?__  
_

"I suspect this was Sasuke's idea?" the man suddenly said, looking at a slice of silvery gold hair between his fingers and turning those glittering irises at him, eerily the same color as his former teammate's new hair.

The man was changed, and for some reason the Uchiha did not feel this was a good idea. For more than two and a half years he knew what he was getting into, what he was doing, what he was planning, how to escape the madness he plunged into. This time, the lack of knowledge terrorized him inside more than he wanted to admit. Having Sakura in the mix made things complicated but he did not care what was in store for the kunoichi. What made him scared was the not knowing, the darkness and lack of any comprehension of what he was about to do.

"Security purposes," he clipped out, searching for anything, desperate of a clue in those leery eyes.

He needed everything going for him when the time came for his body to be taken over but here he was, now lost and practically delivering a tentative ace to the sannin's hand. A glimmer of his dubious smirk came upon those pale lips and the man draped his long arm around Sakura's shoulders. There was something very wrong about the two being together.

"Everyone needs to cool down," he impressed heavily, giving all the rest of them his dangerous smile. "So I'll take our little guest and spend time with her. Kabuto can take both of you back."

For the first time in his life, Sasuke did nothing when Sakura threw him a glance written in the glamour of help.

**ooo000ooo**

"You're home! Where did you go?"

Sakura couldn't feel more petty, the redhead sitting crosslegged on one of the couches looking up as she came in through the heavy oak door of the large abode. Orochimaru behind her faded up the stairs into the shadows and she was left uneasily standing and feeling out of place. She had no idea what she was supposed to do here. Earlier, this Karin had tried to attack her and now suddenly she was all smiling like nothing had happened. As far as she could tell, it was real. Pupils slightly dilated, body language easy, voice normal pitch for excitement. Then again, it might be because of the sannin's presence.

When she frowned, the other girl gave her a look atop her spectacles and cocked an eyebrow. There was a thick book on her lap with a worn paper cover, an image on one of the leafs it was opened to looking like a medical instrument. Her gaze turned to the other couches facing the fireplace wherein a familiar form had lain down, deceptively asleep. _Sasuke-kun._

"Hey," interrupted Karin, her eyes returning to the redhead. "You really must be from the same place as Sasuke. It's rude to not respond, you know."

"As if you're one who should talk."

Before she knew it the words shot out of her mouth, her reply immediately met by scarlet irises burning behind glasses, the other thin red brow joining its pair in mild surprise. The wooden floor's surface gleamed and reflected the fire dancing in the hearth being the only light casting dancing shadows across the room. The warmth inside the house was a welcome change from outside's frosty climate, feeling the heat at her soles, and Sakura wanted to slap herself for the sudden outburst.

She was the one on the receiving end of what happened, but she still felt absurdly bad for snapping at this other girl. The moment was long gone and she did not want to be nasty to someone being relatively nice in the present and appeared to be over the argument.

Sighing exaggeratedly, Karin patted the space beside her, as if to ask her to join, eyes softening as she finally said, "Look, I'm sorry for what I did earlier. Sasuke talked to me. I was wrong with what I did."

It still made her skeptical, and she felt bad for it. Females were notorious for the ability to hold a grudge until it died, preserving its remains and keeping it nailed on a wall. Sasuke was close to this girl, at the same time from what she'd seen, she seemed to be more attached to Orochimaru. She wondered what her traitor teammate had told this one about Konoha.

What bothered her was especially was how much Karin might know about her. It was unnerving how she seemed to be able to turn faces around so quickly, fast but real. _Not unlike you before he left, huh?_

The idea the redhead was similar to her was an uncomfortable feeling, envy coming to fill her heart as she stared at her, still waiting for her offer to be answered. He had been unnaturally close to her in bringing her here, extremely physical with a touch of insanity, too different from when they were at Team Seven. A painful hunch made itself know that this girl, Karin, must be the reason for his change in countenance. What was that phrase again that Sai had read and asked them about? Oh, right. _Keep your friends close, your enemies closer._ Despite being a socially barbaric twat, in certain instances Sai had his uses.

Sakura smiled at the tall girl on the tan leather couch, hoping it wasn't obvious it was forced. She'd be stuck here for kami-sama knows how long, best be it she did not die somewhere along the way before she even got the chance to convince Sasuke to come home.

Accepting the proffered seat, she reclined into the deep cushions and took the liberty of resting beside the redhead, gaze falling to the one who lay before them on the opposite end of the fireplace, his back turned to them, muscles with a certain laxness appropriate to those in deep slumber. She would never grow tired of watching him, trying to withdraw from the sight of his sleeping countenance, from the dark hair and red and white fan emblazoned on his back. Pulling her knees to her chest, she instead transferred her attention to the page of the book in the flickering light.

"Hey," came Karin's dulcet notes, and upon slightly turning her head to the girl, was met with an acute vermillion gaze. It was an intense focus on her, the redhead's face serious with the edge of her full lips glistening in lip gloss reflecting the yellow gold from the fireplace. "Sakura, right?"

"Yes?" she answered, quite unsure as an arm arched around her shoulders, feeling strange as that keen stare sharpened in close range.

"If you ever try to hurt Sasuke or Orochimaru-sama," went the low whisper sending a sweeping flash of raising hair across her arms and behind her neck, "I will fucking kill you."

In her mind the formerly pink-haired Konoha kunoichi had pegged this girl to be psychotic, however this confined threat made her feel she might be underestimating just how much loose screws the Uchiha's new teammate had. She swallowed, wide-eyed, and was unable to move for fear she might do something more drastic. The hand behind her neck might be holding a blade for all she knew.

"I..." the words caught in her throat. There was no way this girl would be able to beat her. There was no way she'd get left behind in Sasuke's eyes. "I'm going to kill myself first before I place Sasuke-kun in any danger."

For a moment her muscles were cramped in tenseness, begging for a release as the russet gaze did not relent. Then as fast as the heavy air rose between them, it disappeared when Karin suddenly laughed lightly and gave her a nudge as she rose to her feet, dropping the heavy book where she previously sat.

"Seems we're on the same side then, anyway," she said, a hand on her hip watching down at her, cocky smile returning to her features, making Sakura wonder how long it'd take before the redhead would end up on the receiving end of her chakra enhanced blows. Her singsong tone flattened. "Just... you know, don't trust Kabuto too much."

The finality of what she said lingered, leaving Sakura confused. _Isn't Kabuto on your side?_

"So, I'm gonna be preparing _tonkatsu_," she abruptly cut off, laughing and waving a hand as if it were nothing, "you gonna help me or what?"

There was a certain Naruto-like semblance in the other girl's expressions that lent the blonde a sense of security, however small, in this strange new world she'd been dragged into. A million questions were whirring in her head but she let them flit behind at the outstretched palm. She had given Karin her open hand the night they met, as a truce and a peace treaty, and now the girl was doing the same to her. Her admiration for Sasuke was not hidden, at for that Sakura was sure enough she would do nothing for harm to come to him. Her shady loyalty to Orochimaru loomed like a menacing cloud of untrustworthiness, however it was a gamble she was willing to risk. She did not come all the way from her village to stumble on this.

Naruto, through sheer convincing power, managed to win people over to believe in the ideals he had faith in. If there was any chance she could get Sasuke to return to Konoha, she would have to try to do the same. Starting with this Karin, whoever she was. There had to be a side of normalcy in there, to be able to sympathize with others, no matter how corrupted she was by the vilest of realities that was Orochimaru. If there was a lighter side she could turn to, that was enough. If she were able to help Sasuke, she was important enough.

Sakura took the hand, and was pulled to her feet, glinting glasses grinning in firelight.

"Sure."

**~x~**

_He could feel the wetness sliding down his face, mingling with the blood sticky on his hands from clutching the sheets so hard he was punctured holes through it into his skin. He really shouldn't cry. This wasn't new. Biting into the pillow to keep from making a sound, he wanted to scream, pleasure coursing through his system. He was not supposed to like this. He wasn't supposed to like this. He wasn't supposed to—  
_

_The sweat was slick across his back and he tried not to notice, every now and then pushing back the damp hair constantly entering his eyes with trembling fingers stained in crimson. He could feel those rough hands on his waist, on his back, shoulders, and felt the dirtiest he was in his life. He clenched his hand tighter, trying to drown every other feeling with the pain he was causing himself._

_It was a madness consuming him, but he could only see that face everywhere, mocking him, those hands reaching out to clutch him, suffocate him, robbing him of every innocence and morality he tried to hold on to. Flinching as the blinding clench of muscles began, he reached out, stretching out his arms to kill, rip that fucking throat out, get this fucking over with__—_

**~x~**

"Sasuke!"

He opened his eyes to Karin's harsh, commanding voice overrunning his dream, ripping him back into reality, crashing through the blurry haze and everything focusing into vision. Astonished green eyes and fine silvery hair splayed over the gloss of the hardwood floor, his hand clawed, biting into that girlish neck of hers, feeling the throb of her pulse at his fingertips, wetness distinct on his hand... _Sakura!_

"Sasuke, stop it!"

Arms around him yanked him back, angry bright eyes through heavy-rimmed spectacles meeting his as he was pulled off the girl on the floor, the solid color of blood on his hands maroon in the detrimental light where it shined like spilled ink. The red hair flicked at his face as his teammate whipped around to the fallen form and help her up, a stain spreading down her shirt even as their hands tried to stem the flow. Those green orbs found him and for a moment he felt like his heart would stop, the rabid fear in his dream still drumming a tattoo on his heart.

_You..._ he almost choked on a swallow as he felt sick, his former teammate's face so pale and in grim concentration, the familiar green glow appearing beneath the spread of their fingers. _Shit._

It had carried over, that abysmal nightmare. He never meant for this to happen. He had dreamed of hurting her, punishing her for unfettered insolence, but not this way. He did not want to drag her into the mess of the other side he lived on. She must have been close enough to be within grasping range and...

Onyx eyes roved over to his teammate, busy with enough to deal with as she pressed into the punctures on one side of Sakura's neck, applying pressure in a first aid attempt while the rest of the wounds were being healed. His confused stare hardened at the splash of fiery color against the back of the lilac turtleneck. Karin knew. She had known him for quite a while now, known about his violent tendencies in his sleep, known enough to not disturb him in deep slumber.

A hand rose to wipe at his mouth, momentarily forgetting sullied fingers, until the raw tang reached his nose and besmirched a crimson mark across the lower part of his face. The thick odor made him feel sick, coiling like a rancid snake in his stomach, but rendered him unable to bring the stained hand away from his face. He wished her hurt and corruption, all his hatred focused on the formerly pink haired girl sitting almost motionless on the floor. But he did not expect this.

He swallowed hard.

"Get out," came a shrill command, the redhead turning to face him, standing up as Sakura's hands slowly and surely transferred to the other side, patching up the row of open marks.

"That's not-"

"I said get out!" Red eyes blazed at him as she shoved him towards the stairs, all crimson strands fluttering in the air like a war goddess. His own temper suddenly burst, the raging rush of emotion getting the better of him.

"You knew," he snapped back, voice rising. "You _knew_ but you let her get close. What were you trying to do!?"

"I did nothing of the sort," she returned as heated as him, "I tried to stop her! She was insisting and—"

"You _knew_!" cutting her off completely disregarding what she was telling him, an animalistic snarl emerging from his throat. "How dare you—"

"My, my. Not even a day and there's blood already?"

The simplistic statement was silken yet jarred the escalating violence to a sudden halt, Kabuto's voice easily causing silence to reign both him and Karin and root them to the spot. When he turned his head, the male medic was kneeling before the blonde on the floor, upper body turned around as his flat eyes focused on him alone and wearing a casual grin. The annoyance he felt at Karin's mishap bloomed into white anger that he trembled where he stood. The redhead was open in her disbelief, red irises meeting the dark gray turmoil of his, full of meaning.

_Stop_, he read, something the medics would not pick up as she had her back against them. _Get away. I'll handle this._

When his attention roved back to the one he hurt, he wished he hadn't felt as guilty as he did earlier. Raven hair fell unevenly across the emotion across his face as he stared at her through the slits of black. Sadness and confusion were in those green eyes bathed in the brightness of anxiety. How she dared be the one disappointed. If only she knew.

In stormy temperament the Uchiha turned on his heel, his ill timed dream towing everything that shouldn't be into this world. The redhead was the first to know and had stood by him. He could not possibly drag another one into this disarrayed existence he lived in. Once again, he refused her speechless begging of him, that emerald look full of expectation, dark red spilling between her fingers and dripping all over the place, the fire crackling behind their forms. He was not sorry. He would never be.

**ooo000ooo**

"Does she know already?"

"No."

The brilliant deep sky rained gentle snow onto the village. On the balcony two silhouettes conversed, passers by who could not look closely enough fooled by the lack of illumination and going blissfully ignorant on their way. One was leaning into the railing, watching the tranquil scene he had chosen for this job.

"You plan on telling her any time soon?"

"Maybe not. And quit badgering me about this, it's getting boring."

The gray-haired medic pushed up his glasses using his middle finger and smiled mockingly. Amber eyes watched the yellow light cast on the ground through the house's windows by the fire inside. Being dead serious was something he used to do around three decades ago. He stopped thinking too much after that, becoming a disdainful and acrimonious person hardened by the way his life was led. He began being insolent to everyone, and he was bemused Tsunade and Jiraiya hadn't ended up the same way as him.

She was Hokage now, and he still stayed by her side. They all aged and turned old within time, yet here he remained, defying the natural aspect of living. He never wanted to wind up a brittle bag of bones to be cared for like some newborn babe. There was a time he would have gladly spent the rest of his years with them, to be able to grow wise and cynical with the people he had been closest to and be laughed at by children, only to scare them away from bothering them. But now it has all changed. It all seemed so long ago. Being a helpless withered man wasn't an aspiration he would welcome this soon; there was a great deal of things he hadn't achieved yet.

This Sakura, she was one of the strangest people he knew. The point Sasuke dyed it aside, she had hair the color of the cherry blossoms on the trees, and eyes that were of lush grass, a rather exotic combination that told you she was a child of spring. Go any deeper than that and others wouldn't have seen anything special. Well, not that he had, but he wanted her here for a reason. He wanted to see if he could prove something to right. He would have to be patient and simply wait for now.

Intertwining his long, slender fingers together into a steeple before him, touching it to his thin lips as he stared out into the open white oblivion, Orochimaru sighed deeply. One week before his arms would be too painful to move freely, three weeks before they wither into rotten husks. He maybe not able to use techniques but at least he had regained some ease from the agony, however brief. It was enough time. This show unfolding before him would be a very amusing one indeed.

**ooo000ooo**

Konoha's sunshine warming her back as the golden sun rose in the sky was something she never imagined she would miss. There was simply nothing else in the world she wished more to experience than the balmy breeze through her clothes and hair... her hair that was now a white gold color that matched the eternal winter in this village she had ended up in, no more the pink of cherry blossoms in full bloom during spring.

The other medic's hands were cold as they trailed along her neck in the room allotted her by the sannin, all high ceiling and tall windows, heavy draperies and a four poster bed. This was a house. A home. She shuddered and tried not to imagine what had been done to take this estate over. Sitting still on a stool in the middle of the room full of books and writing desks, her toes curled into the thick carpet as a scalpel flashed silver in the muted incandescent lights.

"This will feel like a pinch," came Kabuto's even voice and she closed green eyes against the snowfall scene through the large panes. "This is the last one and we're done."

The familiar slice of the fine blade through her skin drew across where Sasuke's thumb had gouged through her jugular and almost crushed her throat and she did her best not to move away. Almost immediately she felt his intricate chakra weave through her skin, painfully sorting completely healed flesh into position. The spur of the moment had caused her to panic and heal herself to stem a hemorrhaging blood loss and to go on automatic. It was when those accusing Uchiha eyes were glowering at her that Orochimaru's assistant appeared and helped her, Sasuke walking out without so much as remorse.

He had never hurt her. Not physically. She remembered he tried when they first found him after those two years he was gone, back with Sai and Naruto and Yamato at another of their hideouts. He tried to kill her but nothing happened. This time, it was different. There was blood drawn, and hers unsurprisingly.

"Done."

Even she had to admit she had not imagined Kabuto would be this incredibly good at being a medic. Where she had expected torn scars to remain after her hurried mend, before the hand mirror he handed her she could see perfectly reconstructed skin as if nothing had happened. She was taught as a battle medic to not to worry about aesthetic quality as long as her patient lived. She'd seen Tsunade perform painstakingly long operations to craft and regenerate skin to its formerly flawless state. The gray-haired medic's technique lasted fifteen minutes at most.

The feat made her feel incredible inferior and out of their league. There was so much to learn, so much to improve on, so much to accomplish, so little time. Sighing, she returned the mirror to her companion and was rewarded a smile. She did not know whether he was sincere or merely played the part. He had fooled her, them, once in the Forest of Death. There was no telling if he was doing the same thing to her right now.

"Would you kill me," she started, carefully approaching the subject, "if you had the chance?"

"Be careful what you ask," he said, lips stretching even more to reveal white teeth. "By any means Orochimaru-sama doesn't want you damaged, so at the moment I have no wish to do so."

Sakura's brow wrinkled at his response. She was obviously predictable, gullible to the misleading kindness that he possessed. If ever there was something that she could do to prevent anyone from guessing her moves, then she would be having the upper hand against all of them. Until then, she was live bait for them to use as they wished. To control as they wished. A professional at deceit and treachery was something she was taught not to engage in, this man being one of the best she encountered. She trained with Ino in psychological proficiency but that in itself was not yet proven through actual application. Even then, during practice, there was very little she could do against the Yamanaka.

The spy medic was folding the soiled instrument into a rag, wiping bloodied fingers into the unsullied cloth. He had fooled her before and nothing was stopping him from doing it again. For an instant, as he was fixing his tools at her feet, the image of his muscles in his arms resurrected the feeling she could not pinpoint earlier. The fine hairs on her own arms rose, freezing her to the chair.

"What does Orochimaru really want from me?" she asked bluntly. There was no other way to put it. He was able to use his arms, supposedly what she was to heal and followed after the Uchiha avenger for. "What is he planning?"

Kabuto did not pause in his ministrations, lenses of his glasses catching the glare of the warm lights and hiding whatever feeling he had not managed to hide. Straightening up and slowly walking out of the room as if hearing nothing, he suddenly paused by the doorway, a bare hand on the frame and head slightly turned to the side.

"I am not at liberty to disclose anything of this," he shrugged, free hand sliding to the knob. "But he definitely gets what he wants."

Glancing at the outside scene once more, she could see green eyes telling too much of what she felt reflected transparently on the surface of the glass. The blonde hair was a welcome change, she felt. She was not Sakura. Naruto's Sakura... Konoha's Sakura... that person would never do this. She would never stay. She would leave as soon as everyone thought she was settled in.

No matter how much she wanted to convince herself, just the thought of being alone out in this weather, leaving the warmth, leaving this place where _hope _was, she didn't want to do it. It was easy. Throw open the large windows and grab a cloak, she'd be on her way home. But seconds later when she heard the door click shut and close her eyes to hide in the darkness, she knew she couldn't leave Sasuke.

* * *

_Love_


	6. VI: Dawn to Dusk

First let me start out by saying that I am an utter douche for not updating this in so long. The other story, Scorpio, had been updated three times in a flash for reasons of: My muse. I am so sorry, guys. I was rendered completely useless by the plot/happenings of that other story. But hey, I finished this too right after I finished that. :D

This is so far my most complex story so yeah, it still has plot elements, but of course there has to be SasuSaku lurve somewhere in there. I hope I make it up to you with this chapter. :D Oh, and any of you who are looking for the OroTsu pairing, you guys have to wait a whole lot, then you're gonna get an eyeful of it. Mehehehe

One thing, about the "She doesn't know yet," Oro said last chap. No, Sakura won't have abnormally overwhelming secret godly abilities like Sasuke or Naruto. And now that's squared away...

Thanks to you guys, shkh4ever, too addicted to fiction, mistressinwaiting, hersheys, 2oatmealcookies, sundance1989, nicolerogersXX, NightRaver, dolce-bebe, l, Kendrachu, delicate . desires, and all the silent followers. It's been awesome reading your responses. :3

**Disclaimer:** I do not own nor profit from Kishimoto's characters.

* * *

**G****ods of Vindication**  
Part VI: Dawn to Dusk

"_I really don't mind what happens now and then, as long as you'll be my friend at the end…"_

* * *

Because damn, those neighbors' dogs were noisy in the morning.

Blearily staring at a pale sky through the open curtains, the Uchiha cussed beneath his breath at his forgetfulness to block out the windows the night before. The drive to get up was not there, but the longer he remained inert where he lay the more he felt annoyed at the brightness spilling into the room and siphoning out the sleep from his leaden body. This was particularly why he disliked waking up.

Peeling himself off the bed and teetering on his feet, he winced at the outside scape of a muddy street and people ambling on below from where he perched on the balcony. The icy bite of the air drew gooseflesh across his exposed skin, his calm countenance watching a world peacefully ignorant of their existence. It burned how Konoha was enjoying this sort of peace while not even bothering to chase after the killer of one of their so called prestigious clans. Sure, they treasured his bloodline, the abilities it carried, yet for how many years it dragged on, they never bothered chasing after the one who blinded those eyes forever. They let him escape, they never followed him. It seemed to be left as a burden upon his shoulders to carry on this mission by himself, to completely end this cursed family.

Closing eyes the hue of midnight blacks and dawn grays to the blandest wash of morning, Sasuke breathed in the crisp, cold air. He really hated this.

Turning to stride back to the accepting warmth of the room, he stepped over the mess of clothes littered across the floor, picking up a discarded shirt and pulling it over his head before walking out the door.

**ooo000ooo**

Sitting on a cushion by the low table in the kitchen and pressing fingertips into the empty porcelain teacup in her hands, Sakura frowned at her warped reflection on the black, shiny surface. Kabuto was dallying about, heating last night's leftovers for breakfast, and she watched him with cursory interest. Working under Tsunade had effectively destroyed her bio clock and she found it hard to sleep after last night's events despite being exhausted and bone weary. She had not expected anyone to be up as well, but was surprised to find herself thankful the other medic was an early riser as she drifted through the house in the dark of dawn.

"You don't have to do this," she said to the gray haired boy (_was he even still a boy?_) scooping rice into bowls of the same black glazed ceramic as the cup she was holding. He seemed particularly attentive to her, probably by orders from his master, but it made her uncomfortable she was being treated as if she would easily break.

"You're injured," he responded lightly, as if a joke, and set a steaming bowl in front of her along with another filled with miso. "You're recovering."

"And I'm fine," Sakura matched, to which he gave her a grin before seating beside her. The lightness did not reach his eyes. Her mind was still whirling around what happened the night with Sasuke, unable to forget with random memory flashes of the cataclysmic hatred she witnessed in him. It had been horrible, and that wasn't even an accurate description of what she felt about the situation. For so long she and Naruto, to some extent Kakashi, had tried to pry into what their teammate had been like.

For an instant the sought after window into his soul was blasted open in a crucially sensitive moment and she feared she did not like what she saw.

She'd been in the kitchen with Karin, accompanying her in the comfortingly mundane task of preparing dinner, when she felt something was wrong. There was nothing particularly off to go on except a strong gut feeling urging her to go back to the living room. Tsunade had worked on perception for her, razing it to a fine bladed point as a reminder of wariness and for her to be open to any possibility of the most unexpected things to happen. It was a useful trait in their field, and led her to always explore what bothered her. True to her instinct, when she stepped out back to where the Uchiha lay sleeping, a fear gripped her internally like a cold breeze raising the fine hair at her nape.

He lay no longer curled against the room. He was on his back, face drawn towards the fire and still in deep slumber. His visage, however, held an extreme tenseness, hands gripped into fists on his stomach and clenching his shirt, dark eyebrows drawn sharply together, sweat glittering on the white skin of his forehead, fine lips in a succinct frown. Right off the top of her head she pegged it as a nightmare. A step toward him elicited a sharp command behind her.

"_Don't._"

She had been unaware the redhead had followed her out of the kitchen. There was enough conviction in that order, and yet she remained unconvinced, watching his form stiffly lying on the couch. Her former teammate had been in some sort of pain, and knowing the Uchiha genocide, the only thought remaining wavering in her mind was of putting an end to his protracted suffering by waking him up as she had approached his prostrate form and lightly touched his shoulder.

"Eat up," interrupted the other medic's voice into her remembering, the warm steam from the bowl of rice wafting into her face. "You still need to regain lost blood."

"Thank you."

The words came easy, rhetorical to her ears. If Kabuto had noticed, he did not press her, instead turning to his own meal by her side. Her fingers felt clumsy as she took the chopsticks into her hands, heart thudding as she remembered the exact moment she'd woken Sasuke. Obsidian eyes blazing a black tempest, a fury of a universe contained into the snarl of gritted teeth, lightning fast, a hand previously curled into a fist shooting out and grabbing her by the throat.

Green eyes closed, the image burning behind the darkness of her lids in the cold morning air.

Pain had never bothered her. Physical pain, that is. It was nothing. However, emotion scars ripped into her heart as the incredible force of her dark avenger rammed into her and sent them both sprawled across the living room floor, a rabid intent magnified a million times onto her as the only tangible form he could find in his murky dream. It did not feel right, his violence, the hatred consuming him. There was a pure, real intent to kill in his actions, in his damned eyes, but somehow as they crashed into the glossy floorboards, she knew it was not her. Sasuke _was_ looking at her, but he wasn't seeing her, that much she knew, that much she saw through the physical pain as he tried to kill her.

There had been a sudden shock in his expression at Karin's sharp voice last night after his name was called another time, a dawning realization on his aristocratic face lit by the glow of the fireplace at the very last moment before he was brutally pulled off her to put an end to his momentary insanity. It had been crystal clear he had been as horrified as her at what had transpired.

Whatever was bothering the Konoha traitor, she needed to find out. Subconsciously she reached up to touch her neck where his fingers had last been, wondering why he was so engulfed in negative hate. His very existence was soaked in it.

Before the killing incident (_because it was so appropriate to call it such..._), she remembered telling his redheaded teammate she would die before causing harm to Sasuke. She felt revulsion flow in her veins. It was such a ludicrous statement, coming from even her. She'd spoken it out of necessity to get Karin off her back and not be suspicious about her, yet in light of what had happened it felt entirely wrong, a tainting highlight of ignorance shining like a spotlight on her. Like she'd been incredibly stupid and played. But then again, if Sasuke did really want to kill her, she wouldn't be able to do a thing.

Once more, the gray haired boy's voice broke clear through her thoughts.

"You know, you're gonna be on a sort of vacation here," was made through slow chewing.

"What?" she responded, opening her eyes and turning them to him beside her. Orochimaru's right hand man swallowed his mouthful before turning to face her and giving her a reassuring smile. She caught what he said, her first instinct wanting to use the chopsticks in her hand to stab them at the other medic. Of all the words to describe her presence in the middle of their band of nutcases, he chose to call it a _vacation_.

"I've gone over your question last night with Orochimaru-sama. You're not going to be doing anything for the rest of time you're here."

Well, this was appalling. Sakura felt annoyance trigger a _tsk_ from her. "Then _what_ in the world does he want me to do here?"

There was a sly, low chuckle and glasses flashing her blindingly with lemon sunlight streaming through the doors behind them. She was convinced of the notion that had she not known what he'd done to them before, she'd be wrapped around Kabuto's charisma that felt so safe she had to remind herself every so often he was not playing on her side. He was the snake sannin's pet, working for his interests alone. After a few words with him people were bound to fall to his wiliness if they weren't careful.

"He's trying to confirm something. In the meantime, you're here solely for his entertainment only, before he calls in need of your actual use."

The word _entertainment_ made the Konoha kunoichi's cheeks burn bright against silvery hair as her imagination ran away. The perceptiveness of her companion allowed him to pick up on her train of thought, immediately causing him to laugh out loud, a cheerfully bright sound in the fresh morning chill that did not match the nature of his disposition.

"No, not like that," he explained, waving a hand apologetically with a smile. "Join him for dinner. Conversations. Nothing fancy. Talk to him when he asks for you, it's very easy. I assure you there will be nothing of the sort of what you're thinking." At this point the older medic's face became more serious, fixing her a sardonic look. "Your main objective will be delivered directly to you from himself."

"But, how _long_ would it take?" Sakura blurted out before she knew what was passing her lips. The noose was tightening with every passing minute she remained here. "I can't be fooling around or they'll notice I'm gone. I _can't_."

Kabuto was quiet, returning her gaze. Finally after what seemed like a long time he shrugged, taking a sip from his tea and setting it down quietly as he ran the details through in his head. How long, indeed. They needed only one more test to go through before Orochimaru would decide to allow their guest to know. He could devote his time to that single test alone.

"One week."

The heavy weight on her conscience lightened considerably at his answer, him turning to smile casually at her. There was no more reason for her to be alarmed. She could do this. She could use this time to do whatever they wanted her to do, play the little ignorant girl, and at the same time try and find a way to convince Sasuke to come back home. She was Haruno Sakura. She _can_ do this.

"One week," she repeated slowly to confirm it, as if to set it in stone.

The gray haired medic pushed up his glasses, nodding, "One week."

**ooo000ooo**

"Good morning, Sasuke-kun."

He had woken up and trudged down the stairs, arms crossed, to be greeted by an empty house. Or so he thought. In walking along the hallway leading to the backyard he happened to pass by the kitchen, where Kabuto took the liberty of greeting him, knowing full well he would be incensing the Uchiha by doing so.

Despite the freezing day nipping at him, Sasuke felt the blood boil in his veins, ears almost ringing at the voice calling out the greeting. Turning to glare at where the sound came from, his view was right through the kitchen doorway and to the goddamn gray-haired medic at the table. The blistering anger in him was immediately doused by what he saw.

He expected the medic to be alone. He wasn't.

There beside him was the pink-haired girl he nabbed back in Konoha, now blonde, sitting eating breakfast beside Orochimaru's medic as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Kabuto grinned, those dead eyes knowing full well how much damage he'd done. He froze.

"Why are you with him?" Sasuke demanded in a low tone directed to Sakura, trying to control himself from raising his voice. Emerald eyes flickered to him and he could see how her expression, previously laughing at something the other medic said, faltered.

When he woke up that morning he had been pondering how to explain to her what exactly happened that night, to slap together a half assed apology to show her he didn't didn't intend for anything to happen but at the same time convey he didn't care she was hurt. He wouldn't tell her much, not to the extents so damaging she would have something to hold against him, but just enough to tell her she was collateral damage. But this...

Seeing her with _Kabuto_ of all people, summoned a white hot anger within.

"We were just talking," dismissively simple, quite obvious the way she was trying to put up a strong front against him with slightly narrowed eyes and the false uncaringness in how she twiddled the chopsticks in her soup.

Without a word he walked over in steps of controlled fury, grabbing her by the arm and yanking her to her feet as he tried to ignore the growing smirk on the gray-haired spy's face. It took all self control not to rip out a chidori in the middle of the kitchen. Ignoring the squirm of protest from the girl, he managed to pull her away from the table.

"Sasuke." A warning in the tone.

He paused, sighing deeply to control himself before turning around to face Kabuto without releasing his former teammate who was now halfway out the door. He was well aware the blonde had a hand on his that was wrapped around just above her elbow and was trying to pry herself free. Tightening his grip proved to be an easy solution to keep her in line at the cost of a hiss of pain, because right at the moment he did not give a flying fuck whether he was hurting her.

"You still remember last night, right?" came the continuation, black leering eyes behind glasses. "We need to talk."

"No. We don't need to talk," Sasuke snapped, shooting a menacing glare at his direction. He was going to end this right here. He turned to Sakura, her viridian eyes sparking indignation at what he was doing. "You and me, _we_ need to talk."

**ooo000ooo**

Storming into the back porch Sasuke released her against the wall. Judging by his expression alone it seemed he had been tempted to have flung her against it instead.

"What were you talking about?" he besieged, pressing her slender shoulder against the shingles. He did not care to mask his anger for what it was, pinning her there with a viperous gleam in his eyes.

Right before he ambled past the doorway of the kitchen, she and Kabuto were discussing whether chakra scalpels were better than actual ones. Her companion had made a joke about needing concentration, so she had laughed. It was where they both noticed the Uchiha, and the older medic called out to him. In startling contrast to last night, Sasuke's reaction had been incredibly unreasonable as to what had actually happened, her intuition pointing to behavioral problems because shit, she was going to be Hokage first if someone who witnessed the murder of his clan and ran away from any remaining sane contact did not have issues.

Her mind going back over to his appearance that morning, Sakura realized there was no exchange at all. Immediately there had been a dangerous undercurrent in the way he turned his head to the greeting, the way he glanced with loathing to their direction before falling to her. As was what happened the night before, he did not seem intend it for her. But he happened to see her and all the turmoil of emotion on his face changed, morphing into accusation and distrust at her sitting there beside Kabuto. On her part, she argued with herself, he must have had some longstanding altercation with the spy.

However right now, staring into the darkest depths of Uchiha eyes full of furor, the strength of his openly blatant temper choked her words.

"Nothing," she managed to hiss back at him. Her answer did not seem to satisfy his impatience, and before something else issued from his lips, she hurriedly added, "I woke up and he was there."

"What_?_" Sasuke's voice dramatically calmed down but his eyes told a different story, her heart leaping into her throat. "He was in your room?"

"_No_!" Kami-sama, this was not the way she wanted this to go. "I meant, he was the only one awake."

Gray eyes darkened to coal black but he seemed capitulated by the response. Unconsciously, her hands had come to rest on his chest and through his shirt she could feel the tattoo of his heart on her palms, its increased pace rhythm driven by his emotional state. She wondered how close to the edge he was and remembered how he struck out a raging lightning trail towards her when she wouldn't listen.

He was dangerous, she knew, and he scared the hell out of her when he was like this. She never knew how to deal with him because he never was the same one moment from the next. She could tell, much to her dismay, he was emotionally scarred far more than what she'd imagined.

The tremor in his hand fisted painfully on her shoulder told her just how angry he was. He seemed to grasp what she was trying to make him understand, however it only appeared to stoke his agitation as his eyes closed tightly, raggedly running his other hand through the raven mess of hair. His frustration was feeding her anxiety, feeling her heart beating so fast she feared it would burst. He was too volatile. Sakura knew just about enough to know he can kill, accidentally or otherwise, and instinctively she pressed back into the wall in a bid to distance herself from him just as the glare fixed back onto her.

"What were you talking about?" he asked, irritated voice a balancing act between keeping calm and losing it.

Medical conversations flew through her head, as well as last night's trauma of flickering fire and blood. She forced herself to turn away from him, knowing well she could trigger something if she mentioned something he didn't like. There was no reasoning with him when he was like this but she had to do it, she had to do something.

"Sakura." Icy tone. "I'm _asking_ you."

"It was nothing."

Midnight eyes bore into hers, seething between his lips, "I am asking you properly. What did you talk about?"

There was something about pissing him off which frightened her to no end. There was also something terribly satisfying about it, because by far these few days with him he'd shown so much reaction than the whole time she knew him. Whether it could actually be determined as any sort of progress where Sasuke now definitely saw her as something, not merely glossing over her before bickering with Naruto, it was still progress no matter how negative or hostile he was to her. _Kami-sama, three days in and he's already fucked me up into thinking his outbursts are good._

"Sasuke-kun," she started, trying to laugh but coming off sounding forced, "You're overreacting."

Murder filled dark gray irises as he narrowed his gaze, his hold tightening again and she knew his breaking point was veering closer the more she antagonized him. Why he was so mad with her eating breakfast was something she had to find out to avoid any future repeats of this incident. She tried pacing her breathing, then added with as much sting, "What's _your_ problem?"

It was clear to her he was making every effort not to outright crush her.

"You were talking to Kabuto," he forced through clenched teeth. It was like a bolt out of the blue to Sakura. "Now _what_ was it about?"

_Huh. Kabuto._ It was like a bucket of cold water as she stood there before him, stunned and pinned to the wall. How infuriatingly petty. _Kabuto_. It was Sasuke's business that she was here, sure, but to micromanage her every movement, every conversation with anyone else, it felt as if she wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of his indisposition. This was just plain disappointing, lighting her own fuse. Sasuke had the balls to throw tantrums over her talking to someone else when _he_ of all people was kissed by Karin the other night.

To be fair she only managed to catch Karin leaning in and having the redhead blocking her view of anything else, but the fact that afterwards they were both discussing in hushed voices too soft to pick up on, there was something that went on. And this very same Sasuke was throwing a hissy fit over her discourse with their medic. The absurdity made her want to scream.

"No," she shot back firmly, ignoring his glowering. This was worth a try because he couldn't go on trampling on everything. The line had to be drawn somewhere. "Sasuke-kun, you can't always get what you want."

"_Everything _was part of our agreement."

"You can't just—"

"_Don't_ keep pushing me to—"

"Sasuke-kun, you have to _stop_—"

"_Tell me_."

"I've already told you, you can't—"

"_Tell_. _Me_."

"Please Sasuke-kun, don't be s—"

"This is the _last_ fucking chance—"

"_No_!" escaped shrilly from her lips, her crumpled in his shirt unthinkingly—and thankfully unsupported by chakra—shoved him away with all physical strength she had.

Conviction was her strongest point.

Tsunade told her this during her training when she wouldn't give up on each new tutoring lesson sent her way until she finally discovered what made it tick, finding out reasons why and how and if it was going to work. She'd been applauded for it. Conviction also played a big role in her everyday life, as she used self control to set her budget, keep up with scheduled appointments and strove to be very much unlike Kakashi-sensei, keeping a stupid resolution not to punch Naruto senseless now that he's been always the one accompanying her home when she drank too much.

Rationality dictated she stick to what she already planned to do, no matter how hard it became to abide by it. _Especially_ when things turned for the worst. There was nothing else harder than having to face what was brewing under Sasuke's surface. As soon as she'd pushed him she'd lost conviction, and everything exploded.

**ooo000ooo**

His fist slammed into the space between her head and the window, in a deafening _crack_ sending a great deal of broken wooden tiles flying. Her reflexes were fast but he was faster, snatching her hands the moment he sensed what she was about to do and almost had instinctively thrown a punch towards her head, redirecting the staggering force a few inches almost too late. All the emotions made his head swirl, her high pitched scream as she turned away to avoid the force, arms raised as a shield against flying fragments and inadvertently curling in towards him, caught in his other arm.

He slammed her back into the wall, caging her in with both hands planted on either side of her. This was dangerous territory after what happened the night before, and Sasuke overestimated her enough to think she would have actually _understood_ to keep away from doing anything stupid. Apparently she needed to be spoonfed this information. So fucking Academy-like. And she seemed hell bent on working him up into a rage. Also so fucking Academy-like. He thought she'd be better than this.

It took the entirety of self-restraint not to repeat last night's catastrophe, but this time he would blissfully do it keeping Sakura's mistakes in mind. His breathing was ragged, scowling at the girl unable to escape the space between his body and the wall, shivering in the morning air and huddling herself protectively against him beside the gaping hole in the wall. What blew his mind was how she was so goddamn fragile yet insisted on exasperating him time and again. This had to end. She needed to realize just how deep the shit she got herself into, because if it all came down to it, she'd be a liability to him instead of helping him.

When she finally had the backbone to peek at him through the mess of silvery strands, those green eyes looked all at once alarmed, pleading, and furious he wasn't believing her when she'd told him there was nothing of importance between her and the other medic. He really did not want to listen. But he grudgingly had to admit he needed to allow some breathing room for the meantime, because any conversation he tried to initiate with her while being high on rabid acrimony spelled unreasonable spats. This was exactly what he'd been trying to avoid.

He heard the other gray-haired fucking medic get up in the kitchen, and footsteps in the hallway approaching the back porch where they were. Fixing his blonde companion with a look loaded of meaning, he watched her swallow hard when he leaned in.

"Stay away from him," he warned darkly, staring into those green depths of her eyes. "You cannot trust him."

**ooo000ooo**

A rustle of the leaf of a book. A snap and the vacuum of fire. Squeaking of leather.

Slowly Sasuke fumbled where he lay, then opened his eyes to be greeted by the dark mahogany of the ceiling, decorative whorls etched into it and stained by age, the wood fractured in a few places. For a moment only the sound of the crackling hearth and the faint tinge of smoke filled his senses as he lay on one of the couches in the living room, its light dancing on the rippling patterns and throwing strange shadows everywhere. It appeared night had fallen, everything taken to the moving shadows and tranquility of the hour. He took a deep breath, still half drunk with sleep, and another sharp sound of paper sliding on paper cut through the air.

Turning to the side, he saw Sakura sitting primly on the other couch, a thickset book on her lap. The hand on the broad page appeared so small as it rested upon the expansive girth of the tome. The other hand held upright a peach with a bite mark of her teeth, elbow on the armrest. His senses were still drugged by sleep, and he was slow to acknowledge her presence that in the stead of his otherwise critical demeanor, observed her without the filter of hatred he normally subjectively resorted to whenever she was around.

She had yet to catch on his awareness, and appeared engrossed in what lay before her as those luminescent eyes half-liddedly followed the trail of words on the page, oblivious to the fruit she clutched. A transparent drop of juice slid down from the fuzzy peel to wrap a thin shining band of liquid gently contouring around her inner arm's soft skin just as she turned her head ever so slightly to follow her reading to the other page, and at last caught him staring at her. It was a brief glance where she immediately returned to be absorbed into her book.

At first nothing registered. Then those concentrated eyes slowly gained understanding, once more looking up to meet his obsidian surveillance, and she broke into a small smile. Despite what he unwittingly did to her the night before, the screaming match he allowed to happen in the morning, threatening her to follow him or shut up, she had the audacity to still want to act on good terms with him. She seemed to not be controlled by normal threats. Her intelligence and unfathomably endless understanding required a much deeper and subtle machination. He wanted her perfect, to be loyal enough not to stray from his ideals but not so insanely disruptive she'd be constantly be in his way.

He meant to kill her should she become dead weight. Or if she rebelled, whichever came first.

But under the haze of waking up and the ache in his muscles from the day's training, the presence of a heavy blanket draped over him became known, something he tested by pulling up an arm and staring at the rich brown hue of the material in his hand. Giving an accusatory glance at Sakura, who was still attentively waiting by him, realization dawned she had approached him yet another time in his sleep. _When will you fucking learn?_

"Do you want one? They're nice," her voice softly merged into his consciousness as the stained arm reached out the fruit in his direction, the bite on its flesh slightly widened by a fresh row of teeth marks. "Karin came by earlier with a basket of these. I can get one for you from the kitchen."

For a moment Sasuke lingered on her hand, how her fingers curled around the yellow and auburn skin of the produce, its crisp, light scent trailing out to where he lay.

Acting of its own accord, he rose reluctantly, sitting with his head in his hands in response to the blood rushing in redistribution across his body. Gradually getting his bearings, he watched her through the mess of his hair, how it appeared she'd frozen upon his movement like she was hanging onto his reaction, the only motion he detected being her thoughtfully slow chewing. She appeared calm but her back was stiffly set, toes pressing into the floor, how her offering arm was unsure in its gesture. He was catching her in trying to play nice, and in an instant he knew he wanted to flip it back, turn it around.

Steadily rising to his feet Sasuke padded over to her, congratulating himself for barely swaying despite the sleepy miasma clinging to his senses. He continued, step after step, until he was before her, those green eyes at an angle upwards to him vacillating between curiosity and apprehension. Lowering himself until he was at level with her increasingly agitated expression, it did not escape him how her breaths were coming shallower, quicker, her pulse lit by the fireplace palpitating against the soft skin of her neck, hidden just beneath the silvery wisps of hair. He surveyed all of her with a calm demeanor, then encircled her wrist holding the peach in his hand, looking down on where her teeth scraped its marks off the pulp.

An audible swallow from her and dark gray irises flicked over to her lips, noticing in their closeness how there was a sheen of the fruit on her shell-pink mouth. For a long time he stared at the way the low flames glistened in oranges and reds on Sakura's mouth in reflection of the dying fire, as well as felt her fighting her own battle to keep as still as possible. The fruit essence under his grip on her arm was growing sticky but he didn't pay heed, the sweet scent filling every inhale he took.

It suddenly became unclear as to why he approached her, since he had been making up his actions as he went. For equally unknown reasons he languidly propelled himself forward, feeling the exertion his former teammate made to try and lean away from him, eyes widening in confusion, only to be hindered by the back of the couch. He felt how her arm he held was trying to pull away as well, and in a moment of awful clarity, he followed and pushed her arm back, further than she was pulling it, further back until he was pressing it into the back of the sofa beside the spray of blonde hair.

Watching Sakura squirm under his prolonged actions, smell fear in the beads of sweat and perfume of spring, a disparaging remark was readied and he parted his lips to verbally crush her, emotionally tear her to pieces. Her free hand, the one splayed open on the rough page of the textbook, rose to try and push him away and he easily caught it without taking his eyes off her, pressing it back down on the thick volume between them. She was near enough he could see the way her pupils constricted from high emotion, to notice how her lashes were still the dark pink of their original color and contrasting against the gold strands falling across her eyes.

It was when his gaze fell back to the fruit stained gloss on her mouth that he felt compelled to move forward instead of speak, sensing her reaction until he closed around her lower lip, the tart sweetness of peach exploding on his mouth, through hooded midnight eyes seeing those coral pink lashes flutter close and fan down her cheeks, silvery yellow brows drawing together. Tugging lightly, following the taste of the fruit and dragging the tip of his tongue across the softness of her lip, Sasuke was fighting the turbulence rampantly scourging every lucid thought he tried to hold onto.

With great difficulty he pulled back, releasing his former teammate with the softest of noises and the raging heat in his ears. It struck him then, the cloud of hypnotic drowsiness gone. _I kissed Sakura_.

Her lips were still parted as he dumbfoundedly stared at her, those closed eyes suddenly opening and a sea of confused green swept up to drown him. The pink, parted lips traitorously reminded him what happened was real, his beating heart suddenly all what he could hear as she searched his face for an answer, looking as agonized as he felt. He had none to give her, unfortunately. Even more damaging, he had none to give himself. _Shit._ He swallowed, wretchedly tasting her, well aware he was still holding her hands in his, the fruit that had caused this now so unimportant and forgotten.

Sasuke released her as if burned, pushing himself immediately to his feet and glaring at the book.

"I have to go," was all he could manage, stiffly exiting up the stairs and sequestering as much distance between them as he could, face in a grim expression of his folly.

* * *

_Yield_


	7. VII: Dream Surgery

(Re-Edited Version)

Okay, so I've discovered _sannin_ is not a title or rank. It literally means "3 people", and the complete collective name for Jiraiya, Tsunade and Orochimaru is Densetsu no Sannin, "Legendary Three Ninja". The term _sennin_ means hermit, which was primarily used by Jiraiya as the Frog Hermit, and then later on Kabuto in the War chapters. I admit I've been using the term wrongly, and will find the time to edit them, but beginning this chapter I'd like to correct it. :)

**Disclaimer:** I only own this fiction and the theories presented here. I do not own Naruto.

* * *

**Gods of Vindication  
**Part VII: Dream Surgery

_"I know right now you can't tell, but stay a while and maybe then you'll see, a different side of me…"_

* * *

Blasphemous thoughts swelled in Sasuke's mind for the few days that passed each time he caught a glimpse of his former teammate. He'd like to believe life went on normally for himself, but nothing plagued him more than the insistence of avoiding the presence of Sakura.

He never bothered to understand what came over him the night he kissed her, nor did he want to remember, pushing it out of his mind each time he was reminded of it. Everything turned into a dizzying world of day and night where he slept and trained without thinking, following on his body's pattern and natural tendency to shun anything or anyone who bothered vying for his attention. Being under the same roof made it hard for him to ignore her completely so his mornings consisted of freezing taijutsu sessions where he dragged Karin out into the cold wasteland lying just beyond the village limits and exhausting himself until dusk arrived. When they arrived home, bedraggled and wet with melted snow and sporting superficial injuries, he'd let the redhead approach the Konoha medic for healing. For his own damages, he'd brush past and lock himself in his room.

After dinner, after the niceties of grabbing his food from the table and eating it alone in the receiving room, after showering the numbness away with hot jets on tired muscle, only would he allow himself to breath easily as if he was done dealing with her for the day. There was hardly a chance where he was not reminded of her presence. The very knowledge she existed was a constant thorn in his side, causing the terrible urge to create as much distance between them as possible. He resigned himself to constantly be irritatingly conscious of her when in the same room until he casually made his exit. In the hallways he would look dead, refusing even acknowledgement. Almost visibly he cringed at the sound of her voice, the sound of her doing whatever she was doing even if she was a door away, wanting to walk out whenever she directly addressed him.

She did pick up on his strange behavior and did make an effort to break away from him, not pressing nor complaining of the occasional _Hn_'s and grunts she received as responses, but it wasn't enough. It was never enough. A heady rush of anger filled him each time she glanced at him and he'd pretend he didn't notice when all he wanted to do was yell at her. For all her sensitivity, Karin did not seem to notice the strained communication between him and Sakura, and he knew it may have something to do with her special ability.

The first day he began training again, the first night after the kiss, his redheaded teammate got lucky and managed to crack a rib. Going to Kabuto was, of course, thrown out the window as an ill decision and dealing with Sakura was not worth it. That night when Karin finally had come and knocked on his door he yanked her into his room and clamped a hand down hard on her mouth, stifling the cry of pain as he ripped open the first few inches of her blouse and sank his teeth into the flesh above her collarbones in a jarring bite. His fingers only managed to slide off her lips once the blissfully numbing sensation of sucking on her blood eased the pain of his injuries and healed him from the inside out.

It was a strange thing, her ability. It was everything, in that it was the only thing he needed at the time. And it was nothing, because Orochimaru had him use her this way when he'd came fresh into Sound as pathetically weak and unable to sustain his guard in fights. Tact allowed both him and Karin not to speak of this. A blood for life force exchange, ideally to be only used for serious trauma. The ability was impractical and involved chakra depletion on her part, but he would much rather do this route than speak to Sakura. Besides, the redhead did not seem to have any objections herself, and it remained an unspoken secret between them.

His vigilant avoidance of his now-blonde former teammate, however, couldn't go on forever. He could not wish her to nonexistence. He knew it, and when the time came to an end and it struck back at him with a whiplash despite his effort for only showing cold shoulders and piercing glares, he found he wanted to crush her in a livid rage.

The Uchiha had descended halfway down the stairs after a healing session with Karin to head into the kitchen for something to eat when a glimpse of the living room halted him. His hand clenched the balustrade as the familiar smell hit him first, fruity and light and crisp, the scent of peaches infecting the lower floor. He loathed the smell which reminded him too much of something he should not have done. The hiss of his temper only boiled upon perceiving her silhouette against the fire, sitting cross legged on the couch and reading another book.

Against the light, the fire caused a halo of slightly disheveled hair glow around her bowed head. Ebony brows furrowed, palpitating emotions resuscitated, black eyes narrowed at the form, his lips pulling down into a fierce frown. The uncanny situation struck him so much his next step down creaked upon the timber of the stair and in an alarmed instant _she_ had turned around, too fast for him to escape without detection.

Green eyes instantly were fixed upon him and he felt himself tremble in self anger for doing what he had done, anger at her for being in practically the same circumstance as when the kiss had happened. If she believed she could deceive him into thinking was a mere coincidence, the peaches, the books, her alone in the living room, she would be mistaken. The blood raging in his head drowned out every thought.

As she opened her mouth to say something Sasuke had hastened down the stairs in furious steps and burst out the front door into a flurry of snowflakes. He needed to regain control over himself before he completely lost it. He needed to not be near her, and in the rapidly plummeting temperature, deigned to search for his teacher who seemed lost in his senile musings somewhere in the village.

**ooo000ooo**

"What do you want from her?" he demanded, standing beside the table of his master as he sat alone in one of the countless restaurants in town. It was not hard to track the man. He did not even seem to be hiding anyway. "And don't be giving me piddly bullshit about your arms."

Glistening black hair shimmered in the lamplights on the wall when the man moved to look up at the Uchiha as they remained in the midst of milling people coming in and out of the establishment. The jutting cheekbones cast shadows on his face, gold eyes glittering with an ethereal splendor that broke as soon as a maliciously small grin twisted his lips. The leader of Sound leaned back in his chair, sticking his chopsticks in his rice bowl upright in front of Sasuke, clasping his hands together as he watched him.

"Are you worried about something, Sasuke-kun?" asked his feminine voice dark and heavy despite the bright atmosphere of the place. He did not belong here, and so did Sasuke. They both were out of place in this civilian village.

"Just tell me what you're planning to do." He grit his teeth, tempted to upend the table. Orochimaru was mocking him.

"Ara, Sasuke-kun. You are so hasty," he intoned. Cat like eyes were cast downward to a bowl of soup. a lanky white hand grasping the wooden spoon, the sennin's pallor pale and uncanny, the bones at the back of his hand slightly raised against the smooth skin and following the movement as he stirred. It was odd seeing those arms so alive. All throughout his time with the man he was witness to how lifeless they had been. Whether he could reaccess his forbidden techniques was something he needed to find out more information on but he felt secure enough that the old man had not tried anything as of yet.

He would not repeat losing his temper here. "You told me bringing her here was for my benefit. I don't see any change."

"Of course. We'll get around eventually."

"I'd rather we get around to it right now," he rebutted as flat and civilly as he could.

A freezing shudder passed through Sasuke when the stirring stopped, those terrible slit eyes meeting his own as the expression became rigid and put upon. The hand let go of the spoon then smoothed the creases on his beige coat as he stood up lackadaisically, chair screeching as it dragged on the floor. Orochimaru was taller than him in this body, towering at a head and a half higher with a slight build, a soft snort from his mentor in derision of his statement as he wiped his lips gingerly with a paper napkin.

"It seems I've overlooked you these past days," he intoned, giving Sasuke a sardonic smile and placing a hand firmly on his shoulder to lead him out. "Why don't we attend to that training then, my dear student?"

The hand remained heavy on his shoulder and as he turned to glare at it, noticed a strange familiarity of its appearance. As his mind reached out to try and grab at whatever was nagging him, a waitress jostling him from behind broke the peculiar feeling he had and erased any importance it had at the moment.

Looking back to respond to the venomous grin, Orochimaru was demented if he thought he could be merely brushed aside like a child. If the old man was hiding something, he needed to find out. As one of the sennin, he had as much intelligence as dangerously possible and wouldn't be so gullible to believe Sasuke would hand over his body at the drop of a request.

The way those snake eyes watched the Uchiha's every move, how he delighted in witnessing his progress, it wasn't for the benefit of killing Itachi. It was for the benefit of inhabiting the body who could destroy fields of men with as little effort as possible, to be able to use his eyes to gain innumerable techniques in a flash.

Sasuke's bloodline was what the sennin was after, not his individual growth. This was where he had to be careful, because if his mentor somehow already knew he wasn't a willing pawn the moment the body transfer process was initiated, the man surrounded by legends and years of experience could as well be already planning how to counter his resistance. Whether Sakura had any involvement in this, unconsciously since she had made it clear she wanted him back in Konoha as is, the sooner he found out then the better to prevent jeopardizing his escape.

Obsidian eyes narrowed up at the macabre gold ones glimmering in the lamplight. He needed to be careful. Brushing the hand aside, feeling the softness of the skin, the matte texture as he flicked its weight off his shoulder with his wrist, he gave the old man an icy glare.

"Then train me," he challenged, wanting to catch any sign of betrayal in those slippery features. Any muscle twitch, any blink, any catch in that morbid expression which might give away something his teacher knew that he didn't. "Train me tonight."

His mentor chuckled and released his shoulder, reaching into one of his pockets and leaving a few crisp ryou notes on the table without responding. Only when he made a gesture to steer Sasuke toward the entrance did the eerie feeling return. In a split second decision, he decided to nail down whatever it is that bothered him some other time. For now, as they stepped outside to meet the wintry gale of village, the avenger tried to put his mind at ease.

**~x~**

_Everything betrayed him. Eventually his body did as well._

_He hated him. He spit in his face, twisting away from the hands on his hips slick with sweat and blood and what else he couldn't think of. All of his thoughts were in a blur, the sunlight streaming in the window was the color of gold of some dumbass' hair and the soiled sheets were like some annoying girl's eyes, the building pressure as he was entered, skin pulling, biting his lips at the increasing rhythm._

_He did not want this. He tried to fight it each time and each time, he failed. No matter how much he convinced himself as disgust roiled in the pits of his stomach and the recesses of his mind, all the defenses and screaming lies gave way to breathless panting as he tried to keep himself in control, fighting back senselessly until everything disintegrated into a tremor wracking his body. Muscles pulled taut, lungs restricted, eyes shut tight in denial, and for an eternal moment he would be lost in the throes of a hated climax gripping every particle of consciousness cursing _him_ into oblivion__._

_Always it was him. Always those hated eyes watching him after he shuddered and collapsed into the mattress and wished him death threats with every ._

_"I hate you too, Sasuke-kun."_

**~x~**

The house was dark and silent when he walked through the front door, the chill permeating the air grim in the way it awoke memories of the night he came home to his family's massacre. Sighing in deep discontent, he shut the door behind him and moved over to the couch, sinking into it amid the creaking of rusted springs and squeaking of soft leather. Unlike the horrific night of his memory, he was filled with peace as he morosely watched the falling snow through the large window panes, lost in the blankness of his thoughts.

Clutching his ribs, the injury registered as a sharp pain with each inhale as the muscles and tendons flexed a couple broken bones. He tried not to think of the pain, enduring it as he had done with every other one. Even if his body was hurting, it did not compare to what he had gone through before, much more it would pale into insignificance against what would happen when he'd finally meet his brother. A torn muscle in his arm, the sprained crick in his neck, they were all irrelevant. He yearned for the warmth in the fireplace now devoid of heat in its empty cavity.

Ebony eyes narrowed as he stretched his tired feet, converging them into the blocks of pale brightness cast onto the floor timbers by the fluorescent lamps outside in the street. Minuscule shadows from the falling flakes danced on the glass and the lower half of his body bathed in the ghoulish blue-white illumination. Orochimaru had been brutal this time, barely holding back. He wasn't worse for wear but the session gave him perspective on where exactly he stood in range of the power or experience of such men as his mentor.

People around him told him he was a genius. It was fed to him day in and out after the massacre, something they took to believe as they viewed the last of his clan walk among them. He doubted that, however, because for him a genius need not be someone who had to run away and search for help of any kind. A genius would have to grow up knowing themselves what they wanted, how they wanted it to happen, and have the ability to make all of those happen all through their own strength and cunning. The only genius he knew was the Uchiha killer.

The man he called brother could be pegged with all the defamations he could think of yet one thing he would have to accept was he had been the perfect shinobi hadn't his moral code been warped into a psychotic monstrosity. There was no special preparation, no hesitation, no _feelings_ nor hesitation. It sucked him into the void of hate he'd been falling into ever since. Nothing appeared to have turned him. Itachi just _was_.

Out of the weary haze Sasuke was submerged in his eyes distractedly alighted on a bird appearing out of nowhere and fluttering onto the windowsill. Gray-colored attention fully fixed on the creature, taking in the gloss of pitch black feathers and the way it quickly set its judging amber gaze on him. It cocked its head to the side, a few times beating its wide dark wings that caught the light and refracted into a rainbow sheen on black feathers, inky feet scattering the snow piled up against the glass. From his glum somnolence on the living room sofa, the talons of the bird were curved and big and gleaming.

He met its ogling stare with a feral baring of teeth, something it reacted to by flapping its wings frantically as though it understood the gesture. His slight satisfaction of surprising the interrupting animal was cut short as a sudden memory entered his mind of a certain someone who controlled this exact creature.

Narrowing his gaze at the raven, he watched in rigid silence as it began to tap at one of the panes with its beak, blinking beady ocher eyes before cocking its head to the other side. (_Could it possibly be...?_) It was late in the night to be still up and he was probably wasn't thinking straight. This was just a ragged bird flown out of its path.

Relaxing back into the cushions, he could not see anything attached to its leg that could possibly make it a messenger of sorts, and resigned himself to refusing rest and lounging in the soreness of his body. There was no additional need to panic over something he could kill with a flick of a blade. Paranoia directed _he_ couldn't possibly be that stupid to be sending such obvious things when it was clear these animals weren't from part of this country.

Before he could delve into debating whether to ignore the raven or kill it, his well trained hearing picked up on the creaking of a particular floorboard in the staircase. A rush of adrenaline spikes his blood and causes him to throw a sharp glance at who dared intrude on him nursing wounds and a bruised ego. A morbid stare pinned the blonde Sakura to the stairs, a crumpled white quilt hanging around her shoulders. Her face told him she was just as loathe to be discovered as he had been at finding her.

He didn't know what to say, choosing to peer at her through the shoddy tangles of his hair. A foot was slid out of the folds of the blanket and pressing its toes into the next stair down and likely the culprit of unmasking her sneaking around, one hand clutching tight at the comforter as green eyes testily looked back at him. Half a heartbeat later the heel of her foot finally bore her weight down on the boards completing the pitchy squeak as she dashed past the stairs and into the kitchen behind him.

His gaze returned to the illuminated blocks of light on the floor, to the throb of pain in the pulled muscle of his leg with his dirty feet stretched out before him. The blackbird at the window was gone, the ethereal glow of the streetlamps and falling pinprick shadows of snow only curled his lips in fretful silence. What was she doing awake? This was no time to dawdle about.

As if an answer to his question there was a clink of glass from the far down the hall, the quietness of the hour carrying the resounding trickle of water as it was filled at the tap. _Thirsty_. He hadn't realized his throat was parched as well, leather squeaking under the shift of his weight. The broken ribs moved agonizingly under his cradling hand, cautiously letting go of a breath he was holding. _I want to drink._

Soon thereafter he could hear the cup she used being set down on the tiled surface of the kitchen counter, clacking with a faint echo of the night in the rustle of her blanket as it swept the floor. Sasuke was met with a dry mouth when he tried to swallow, calculating how long he could stay up in his condition to wait for Karin and the gush of hot blood to fix him.

He did not bother looking at Sakura as she paused by the foot of the stairs to turn her head to him, wanting more than anything for her to get out of his life as soon as she could. There was nothing left for her to do here. He could care no longer for whatever Orochimaru needed of this sad, pathetic excuse of a kunoichi. He needed to keep moving forward, keep being who he was, step in to fill the avenger's shoes in the quest for power and the destruction of Uchiha Itachi._  
_

"You're hurt," came her frail voice slicing through the merging dark and moonlight of the hallucination he was falling into. Precise and unwavering, her tone cleanly reached him as the sound made him twitch.

This was the first time she'd addressed him directly after he began ignoring her, feeling the heat rise under his shirt. He did not know how to deal with her because he merely assumed he'd ignore her when she tried. Now, as she found the courage to actually deal with him, he felt embarrassed and angry for being actually affected by the petty situation.

"I always am," he replied hoarsely, baritone catching in his throat from dehydration and weakness. _Weak._ He hated being so weak, not bothering to even face her as he replied. His eyes were kept firm on the snowy landscape past the foggy windowpanes.

The silence after his statement was so long he thought she might have left. Just as he was about to turn and look, the creak of wood boards underfoot came closer. The brush of the comforter on the sofa was enough to make him frown at the piling white frost on the glass.

"Not like this," answered Sakura, daring to step closer to him, too close as she came to the edge of his vision. "You're not always... This wasn't you and Karin, right?"

_No, you dumb bitch. Like she could actually hurt me if I wanted her to._ He held his tongue.

She was fidgeting, he could tell as much without looking at her. A moment longer and the cushions beside him dipped under the weight of her knee, the cloth of the comforter languidly sliding across the smooth surface of the leather as she lowered herself. He finally turned to stare at her eye to eye with a raised eyebrow. "Don't you have to go back to sleep?"

There was a flinch in her features as she tried to reign in the worry splashed over her face. Too obvious. However pathetic she appeared to be, for a strange reason his mentor was intent on wanting her around and unharmed. The situation called for an inhuman sense of control on his part, as he constantly found himself unable to deal with the lacking points of her character, being so innocent and useless as she was.

"I..." Sakura stammered, the dimpling in her chin suggesting deep unrest on her part. Green eyes were washed out of most of the emerald by the beams of the fluorescent lights outside, and her achromatized gaze fell to his hand clutching his injured side. "If you want, I could..."

He disliked how she never could make a coherent sentence around him. Talking to Karin or even that godawful Kabuto did not elicit this simpering. Nor does the curdling vehemence she used on Orochimaru resemble anything of the sopping mess she turned into when he was the one in front of her. He knew _why_, of course, but it only made him disdainful all the same. A certain morbid satisfaction awoke when she blundered like a fool before him, teasing him to try and see just up to where would her passivity lead her to. Legs spread and whimpering his name, most like. It repulsed him.

His gaze settled tenaciously on her as her brow furrowed, the tangled mess of blonde hair falling around her shoulders. Despite the ill lighting he noticed the bleaching had begun to fade and the light pink roots were emerging.

Soft hands emerged from the blanket, and she watched him as he watched her, carefully reaching out to his injured chest. Even with the heat burning his ears, all sense of cold forgotten, her touch tender as they tried to uncover the broken ribs.

How could he have forgotten she was a medic? _You were always so useless. _His past injuries were probably noticed by her, only she'd never approached him before since she could have assessed them to be non fatal. Orochimaru had not been too kind. He fussed, her glance sliding down to his mottled skin bruised purple beneath his dirt-caked shirt. The jolt of pain with each big lungful made him forget how he'd vowed never to have Sakura heal him. With the redhead out of the house, his pickings were slim.

A hiss followed her pressing of soft palms on his chest, hands infinitely warmer than the chilly air that he closed his eyes to be fixated only on the point of contact. He needed her. There was no argument here.

"This isn't bad," her face apprehensive. "I can fix it, but I can't do anything for the pain. You'll have to tough it out."

He smirked, watching her try to avoid seeing him eye to eye. "Do whatever you need to. It's not like I have a choice, do I?"

She tittered away from him, pushing a lock of white blonde hair to tuck behind her ear as if contemplating what he was saying, not failing to note how quickly she pulled back from his chest. The medic was staring at his injury with brows knitted together.

"Maybe I could ask Kabuto for something, a salve or—"

"You're not," cutting her off caustically, irritated by the name issued from her lips. She was mildly startled, having the courage to briefly meet his eyes, however he managed to catch her gaze slide down lower to his mouth before tearing away to bore into the floorboards. It appeared any contact between them was still a great bother to her, attested to by her trying to edge away from where their knees met. "Either you do it or you don't."

When Sakura made no response except to glare stupidly at the window, he shifted in his seat, intentionally bumping his leg against hers. The reaction was like static, the flinch vividly running across her face. Shadows darkened his eyes.

"Get it done so we can rest."

She was silent, lips pursed. When finally she reached out with hands aglow and hovering before his chest, he braced himself as he watched her concentration to gauge what was to happen.

It felt like someone went ahead and grabbed the part of the rib that had broken off even as she remained completely still, Sasuke snatching the arm rest and back of the couch with agony gurgling in the back of his throat. Chakra was deftly molded and synchronized with his body's reaction to the invasion, to manipulate the bone back into place by force of her concentration. "Don't breath too deeply," was her order. He could only keep watching with blazing sharingan barely open when his former teammate forcefully snapped the bone back into the broken place where it should be. The overwhelming sensation sent stars flying in his vision.

When the miasma lifted, his senses managed to return and the night sounded more quiet, felt more peaceful as the formerly pink-haired medic finished her work. The ethereal glow of the bluish light filtering from the window glittered on the beads of sweat on her smooth brow, a few strands of hair falling out from where she tucked it behind an ear. She was still bent over him, focusing on healing the ebbing ache that remained.

"Do you know why you're here?" he questioned softly, the ordeal leaving him weaker than he cared to admit. The glow from her hands suddenly disappeared as green eyes moved back up to meet his. Some tingling was leftover where his injury had been.

"You're the one who brought me here," she replied, frowning yet again. It didn't seem to fit her features, the insolence of her confusion at what he asked. "You said I'd heal Orochimaru's arms. You mentioned it plenty enough."

His hand moved of its own accord, thumb and forefinger on either side of her face, and firmly pulled her closer.

"Don't take me for a fool, Sakura," he whispered loudly, rolling the syllables of her name over this tongue. He could feel her tremble, see it in the way she shifted her focus on his eyes in their near proximity. When he let go she remained where she was, kneeling over him on the sofa, unhappily terrified of the way he wielded his influence over her flimsy strength of will. "I don't think you're stupid either, so do us a favor and stop thinking I'm an idiot like your Naruto." A wave of anger in her expression. "We both know both my teacher's arms are fit and able. What I need to know is why he fooled me into taking you to this shithole."

The silence stretched longer between them, the tips of their noses touching. When Sakura made a move to lean back away from him, he took her by the shoulder and fixed her with a glare of black ice. "My own survival is not the only thing on the line. If something happens to me, I can't guarantee you can get back to your precious village."

_Tick tock_. The grandfather clock up in the second landing was loud enough in the dead of the night to reach them. Wheels turned and gears groaned behind those washed out seafoam eyes, pondering the hidden threat he spoke. Finally, _finally_, she mentioned something of worth.

"He hasn't been telling me anything," the way she murmured the words barely enabled him to catch them. She licked dry lips, weighing a delicate balance and holding steady his hardened flint gaze. "But Kabuto has offered to teach me medical techniques yesterday. He mentioned he was freed up enough, which is sudden because he was too busy the other day."

That bastard may not be telling him anything but at least this was something to gnaw on if for a moment longer. He'd only realized a dead smile sprung to life on his mouth when Sakura was looked troubled and was once again easing away from his personal space, pulling the comforter tighter around her thin shoulders. This only meant he needed to have the long postponed talk with the bespectacled medic. His loyal little girl could be sick of being around them but he only needed to keep her here for only so much longer. She'd bought her time for a few more days. Soon enough she'd be thrown away like rest of them.

"Sasuke..." she began, lost in construction of her hopeful dreams and optimism, "what would you do after all of this?"

_After what?_ "I'm not sure what you mean."

Warily he kept his attention on her even as he returned his eyes to the window despite it lacking the curious raven of earlier. A throb reverberated through his leg from his knee, another of multiple unhealed injuries. She was fidgeting again and he threw her a sidelong glance. By the very nature of her acting like another bumbling dimwit, she was about to broach an illicit subject she knew he would be disagreeable on.

It was tiring to keep up with things and he would have left minutes ago had she been as useless as any other time. Only she wasn't, and his mouth thinned into a grim line, surrendering to the aches of his body to lean back.

"Well, if you manage to kill... your brother,"—_Careful choice of words.—_"what's your plan then?"

His mind drew a blank. He'd never really thought that far. Numerous scenarios, ideas flashing through his mind's eye, not one set after Itachi's death. There loomed the grievous prospect of him dying in the process, annihilating any reason to plan for a life following his revenge. He'd never allowed himself to think too much or he'd stray from his actual purpose of tearing down everything he had done up until now.

It was uncomfortable knowing there was nothing awaiting him beyond the promise of his brother's death yet he felt strangely satisfied by it, unquestioning of the destiny he set out for himself.

"If I have to die, I'll bring him down with me," he found himself replying, painfully shifting his position sideways a little more towards her, slumping back comfortably against the thick cushion of the couch.

"You can't die," Sakura stated firmly as surely as she knew the sun rose and set in a day, fixing him with selfish disbelieving eyes, pushing boundaries in their strained conversation. "You're the last Uchiha. You can't just die."

He smirked, soaking in the heresy she believed she was hearing. All his life he had been clueless with comforting other people, much less those he didn't care about. Nor would he dare to give it a try. All the reassurance built into him was broken and he couldn't simply give a fuck even if he wanted to, as if the way he was kept to himself wasn't a clue enough. Sakura simply had the rare quality of being able to block out everything else and pretend he would listen, even though she knew he wasn't what she pretended him to be.

Anticipating her denial of his own demise was easy. She believed in a happy ever after to their story when she should have seen all their violent deaths early on. Why she kept insisting they would end up even alive in the first place was an uncommonly mesmerizing prospect. It was good to ponder on, but it was not ideal to actually believe it. A nice story. That's all it ever would be, something a greedy, insignificant person could wish for. His goals were not for this.

"Do you want me to say it's going to be all right? It's going to be over soon, or something?" he asked sarcastically, watching the color drain out of her cheeks as the realization set in.

Miss perfect future rubbed the back of her neck with a blanketed hand, coping with the new information he fed to her. It took her easier to absorb this than what he expected, as she stopped tittering like a nervous wreck and smiled sadly, he felt it was wrong. Fake and dismal, put upon.

The girl was withdrawing, all the beseeching and the warmth wafting away into a plastic mannequin who looked like Sakura but wasn't exactly her. This was how she coped now, changing herself, distancing from anything to prevent risking her piteously shatterable heart.

"If only that Pig could see us now, huh?" she tinkered, his mind wandering to the _other_ loudmouthed blonde. Pale green eyes from the fluorescence regarded him with an unreadable vacant stare. "I think you're a hypocrite."

The flints in his eyes sparked at the friction of her statement. He should have expected she wouldn't shy away from dangerously nonsensical accusations.

"How so?" he breathed quietly, glancing her over, noting the tightness in her muscles, the way she hid behind the folds of her snow white quilt.

"Don't you remember?" she asked back, viridian irises searching him, a lapse of bitter life returning to her features. "When we first got together as Team Seven, Kakashi-sensei asked us what our goals were."

Wanting to listen to her justifications, Sasuke acquiesced, simmering his anger. Unbidden his memory shot back to that sunny day, the sky blue and the trees in full spring. It had been windy that day, all what he could remember. What _had_ happened? He almost couldn't bring to mind what took place, only see their brand new teacher's lips moving beneath the mask, speaking promises and misleading lies. Everything was now vague and he was likely recalling it all wrong.

The blank wall in his mind must have shown because his former teammate was frustrated, shaking those silvery tendrils about her shoulders. It must be so obvious to her. She must have all the details carefully defined in her too big forehead of hers, all the tiny, frivolous minutiae such as what they wore and how they sounded, all the intonations of their voices and all the movements. Sakura was exactly like that, and he was an uncaring asshole.

Teeth grinding, he pondered where this was going.

_Let's take a dive_. "What did I say?" he intoned flatly, withholding all emotion.

"You wanted two things," this pathetic girl started. "You wanted to revive your clan... and to kill a certain someone."

A frown deepened at the edges of his lips, her turn to watch how he received the statement of his idealistic younger self. That day was coming back to him in splotchy minutes as he focused back on the falling snow. Maybe. He _could_ have said something like that.

For a few more minutes a silence reigned which he dared not break, coloring his memories with black and white.

Whatever he might have said or done all those years ago was long gone. It remained he never had been given reason to doubt the village he grew up in at such an age. If he wasn't as complete and unbroken as the rest were, bar Naruto, he had been as bright-eyed and hopeful as any other newly graduated shinobi from their mass producing, killing machine factory they called the Academy.

For the crucial months between their team being formed and where Orochimaru appeared on the horizon, the team which a faultless Sakura had been unfortunately thrust into, the last Uchiha threaded a fine line of believing he was as sane as any other child beside him. He would never forgive his younger self for whiling away precious time he could have used to gather strength into his puny body. And so when he had uttered those words as an answer to Kakashi's question, he mistakenly believed there was salvation after the death of Itachi.

_I want to revive my clan..._

So painfully similar to the ideal of this sub par kunoichi it made bile rise to his throat. Once he'd crossed over to where he stood now, past Konoha's village gates and into the oblivion of insurmountable strength, he could not go back. His eyes had been forced open and no way could he close them once more to pretend there wasn't anything wrong in the world. Sasuke _needed_ to see this through.

"I was twelve. You couldn't hold something against me when I'd been as ignorant as all of you are." The explanation hung in the deathly still air, nipping opened wounds.

Clarity magnified the situation to him, creating her to be the symbol of his past as he lapsed into a contemplative and condescending wordlessness. Those green eyes rekindled their color when she turned away from the harsh light of the streetlamps, the tint shining brighter in the shadows with a sheen of something he guessed would be tears. Everything clicked into place.

His hands were grimy, stained with frozen mud where it wouldn't rub off and bruised to the bone. With tainted purpose he touched the tips of Sakura's short hair, tangling his fingers into where she kept it the same after the Forest of Death. She couldn't meet his gaze but recoiled at the gesture, sullen and disappointed. Hurt, melding into the contact, holding onto hand and pressing it against her cheek like a lifeline.

"You thought I'd come back," he susurrated softly, running fingertips down to the roots, to her scalp, following the curve of her skull. The obvious needed to be spoken, the shame now dripping down her cheeks at the dream she'd been holding onto and what he'd forgotten he'd led her on. "You wanted to be mine."

She always had to be there for him, didn't she? His heart hardened, she succumbed.

He remembered what pushed him off the edge into the chase for retribution, to make him realize he was capable of so much more. Everything had hurt like hell, beaten down and trampled in the foliage by Sound brat shinobi. There had been a dazed stupor where he had opened his eyes to swirling chakra pouring off his body, barely focusing on the unconscious Naruto to realize a pink strand of hair had blown by past them on the ground. Surging adrenaline made his body thrum with supernatural strength, shivering him for a release. He'd turned his head to grasp what had been happening and was met with the shorn head of their teammate.

Sasuke's found purchase in the warmth of blonde tangles and held fast, her tears flowing freely to soak into the blanket. She did not sob, wiping off her weakness with the back of a hand. It reminded him of Mikoto, after one of his parents' fights. She could care all she want but she didn't have to be so transparent. This was her downfall.

"Naruto won't allow that," she whispered against the blanket muffling her lips, eyes looking at him beneath dark pink lashes. "He'd save—"

"Sakura." Her name on his lips felt strange and in the empty house every resonance mocked him back. "Understand how I don't care what anyone else wants. I only care about my brother's death."

"But he's your best friend," she argued, desperate. "He would—"

"Was he? Who decided that, him? You?" he responded flatly, not amused by how he had been branded by his former teammates. "Saying we're best friends is so one sided, don't you think?"

The shock she received was palpable with parted lips and stiffened posture. For a few moments he relished that blow, steeping in her blighted hope of denying the one thing they all believed him to be. _Let me die._ She needed to let go of him. He needed to be freed from her. His message took long enough to sink in and eventually her upset at his logic was replaced by a false smile, quickly rubbing her eyes dry with white hands (_strangely familiar with the way she's grown out of baby fat and the graceful lines of the bones and the way she moves them..._).

"I'm sorry," she finally said, pulling away from his hand and tugging the comforter tighter around her shoulders. Sakura began to shake, still wearing her facade of being all right. "We've always tried so hard to shove ourselves down your throat. We... I'm really sorry. I was just so stupid to not want to see you throwing us back up again and again."

She stood up abruptly, the warm blanket dragging over him as she filtered light from the window behind her to be a haloed dark shadow. Sad green eyes regarded him. "I'm tired, Sasuke-kun. I'll go on ahead."

There was no time left for him to respond when she deftly stepped away and hurried toward the staircase, the thick blanket splayed out behind her and guided to sweep the polished floor by her movements. Small feet rapidly ascended the first few steps without a sound until a loud screech from the wood beneath her weight brought her to a halt in mid-step, a slender hand tightly gripping the railing with her back turned against him.

Carefully she cast an unsure glance at him over her shoulder and he found himself holding his breath.

"Sasuke-kun, we've met your brother already and he's very good at genjutsu. Before I forget, I wanted to just let you know that the technique he used on Naruto... it involved ravens." And she smiled that fake smile she learned from that artist who looked too much like him.

His blood ran cold and alarms in his head drowned out any coherent thought. His blonde former teammate began climbing up the stairs again in swift flits after a swish of the heavy blanket to disappear into the second landing's gloom.

"Sakura!"

Heart racing in his chest he got up to chase her down but upon reaching the bottom of the staircase, a slamming of a door stopped him in his tracks. It had to be a coincidence. There was no margin for it not be.

Suddenly a hollow tapping sound induced the hairs on his arms to rise, a foreboding unrest settling over the last Uchiha. Slowly he look around to where the noise came from.

The view outside was almost stunning. Lampposts casting their white luminescence on everything in an ethereal glow, firs heavy with dark green leaves and ice white coats where other trees were naked and black. Their neighbor across the wide road had their lights turned down low and their windows a muted orange. Snow fell gently, completing a picturesque image he never would appreciate. He could see one thing and one thing only.

Against the pane of the window he'd been staring through before Sakura appeared, a bird sat innocently on the window sill. It met his gaze, the amber-eyed raven who had disappeared earlier now back where it was before, cocking its head to the side. It disturbed the collected snow piles when it shifted to preen its feathers, scaly feet black dusted with ice crystals and large talons. Flapping black wings reflecting the light, it blinked, then opened its large beak and screamed.

* * *

**AN:** This was hell to write because it was sliced halfway through with some problems I encountered sometime December 2012 and January 2013. Basically where Sasuke and Sakura have their conversation, that's where I stopped writing and only managed to pick up things now. But hey, it's uploaded now. :D


	8. VIII: Iron Maiden

(Re-Edited Version)

This was the point before where some people began noticing the plot in the old story. Which is creepy because they zeroed in on the whole epicness so fast. Well... not sure if you got it here since this isn't even the exact chapter but heck, this is the condensed awesomeness of 3 chapters. Three!

**Disclaimer:** Kishi is gagged and tied-up in the corner. For the few precious moments that I have left before SWAT busts down the door and arrests me for kidnapping, I own Naruto. –door bursts open with screams and gunfire-

* * *

**Gods of Vindication**  
Part VIII: Iron Maiden

"_I loved you all along, and I forgive you for being away for far too long, so keep breathing 'cause I'm not leaving you anymore…"_

* * *

Stepping into the living room as he exited the kitchen, Sasuke was met with the sight of Karin lounging lackadaisically on one of the overstuffed sofas with a thin, leather-bound book in hand, perched right where he and Sakura had been talking the night before. Her long legs were stretched out over the rest of the space on the couch, socked feet propped on the armrest. A cold breeze entered through the backdoor and ruffled his clothes from behind, chilling his nape as his red headed teammate turned her attention to him. Her serious face broke into a sunny grin.

"How was breakfast? Blondie was up early to help me," she chattered, not moving from her spot as he took up residence on the other sofa, the material noisily protesting under his weight. Despite being morning, the fire was crackling merrily in the hearth by his side and he reveled in its heat, mind still consumed by the presence of the raven.

"It was fine."

She snorted at his vague dismissal of her handiwork and returned to her reading, adjusting glasses with red eyes flitting across the page. It was at that moment he could hear unclear voices and laughter from behind him, beginning to tense and feel uptight as the door to the basement suddenly opened. The indiscernible sounds flowed crystal clear, his head swimming at the voice of Kabuto cutting through the morning air.

"–come back later, so I'll check if you can perform the operation much better."

"Okay, I'll do that. I can get it much better with practice." His ears burned at her light tone, excitement plainly overtaking her.

"Sure. See you later."

The door to the basement thumped shut and the pink (_blonde_) girl who used to be his teammate finally took note of his presence, her cheery disposition toning down a notch and assuming a surprised appearance. She stood there wearing loose pants and a dark shirt with rolled up sleeves, wiping her hands on a square of towel.

"Oh," she breathed, green eyes softening, "you're up. How are your ribs?"

She did not seem to realize how it irked him to know she insistently spent time with the bespectacled medic despite his orders. However, this time he could not find it in him to summon the rage usually taking over him at such trespasses she made.

He chalked it up to exhaustion, lack of sleep, and thinking too much, giving a droll look as she walked over toward him. Passing a glance to the redhead on the other couch who was too absorbed in her book, she frowned at the arms he crossed over his chest.

He really should be focusing more on his brother now more than ever. Sakura was a distraction. He couldn't afford anything else and the quickest way to deal with her was to get her back to Konoha. He owed her that, at the very least. Turning her loose and expecting her to be an obedient little girl was not an option since it was yet to be ascertained if Orochimaru had done anything to her that might endanger his plans in the long run. Human experimentation was no moral concern to the man.

His charade with the snake had gone on far too long. It needed to end. As soon as this nuisance of a person was out of the picture, it was time to act on neutralizing his teacher. And if Sasuke was to make sure everything would be done exactly as he wanted, this little toy medic of his would have to be planted back safely in their home village without the knowledge of the sennin. It was a hard line to tread, because the moment they'd meet again, the Legendary Three would be less one member.

Besides, she weighed him down. The familiar old bonds she acted on was bit by tiny bit being revived and reconnected no matter how much he rejected them. Physically seeing her, experiencing her existence reminded him he came from somewhere, reminded him of the weakness of the society wanting him to come back home. It wasn't like he didn't know what she was trying to do. She wanted under his skin and if he allowed it, all those three years he spent away would come crashing down. If before he only pondered how she was an unsafe decision, he was sure now.

"Don't be so hardheaded, I'll just check," Sakura admonished, brow wrinkling lightly. She pulled his arms away to gingerly probe at the site of the injury.

With her head slightly bowed, the roots of her hair clearly showed pink, the dye by now bleeding out the natural color from her crown. There was a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach, passing it off to the bad weather as he felt her pull his shirt up to inspect what had been mangled flesh and bone the night before. Above the curve of the strawberry and gold head, out of the view of green eyes, his glance locked onto Karin's in silent understanding.

"It's... healed," the blonde finally diagnosed quizzically with frown. She pulled his shirt back down, the whisper of soft hands still at his sides as she started at him with curiosity. "There's nothing wrong with it, but it's as if... it's like nothing happened."

Oh, he knew. The redhead arrived just after they parted during the early hours of the morning and he'd had his fill of her blood. It was potent as life itself and by the time he was sated, it was as if Orochimaru had never laid a hand on him. Not that anyone but the two of them knew what her precious blood limit was being used for, nor could he care.

"You must have imagined it," he murmured instead, recrossing his arms and pointedly looking away from her. "I'm fine."

The way those green eyes roamed over his features told him her curiosity was still well piqued and searching for a clue. Behind her he could see Karin silently sniggering behind the pages, watching with a meaningful look. This was one secret Sakura couldn't be in on.

**ooo000ooo**

The smell of mold and antiseptics filled his nostrils. Pausing on the stone steps, the dank chill seeped into his hand as he leaned on the wall to catch his breath, above stairs descending into yawning blackness. He was now set back for god knows how long by Orochimaru's insanity of asking for his teammate and to smoothly iron out things after this, he needed to bite down hard and take it in stride. Just this once he'd come crawling back to Kabuto like the hapless beggar boy he saw him as, all to find out and keep ahead of his mentor. Knowing how the spy was a nasty piece of work, squirreling information out from him wouldn't be easy.

Preparation was key because anything could happen. After this, once he sets his strategy in motion, the clocks would run out on Sound and he'd be finally free. It was breaking more shackles, more people who tried to hold him down. The blood sang in his ears, his skin feverish despite the conditions of the underground room. Just this once, just this _once_...

Sasuke sucked the air between his teeth, flexing his fingers. If he needed to hold down his anger for a little bit longer, it would be done. There wasn't a choice.

Inhaling deeply he accepted the rancid cold smell into his lungs, raising his eyes to the cobwebbed ceiling of the staircase and holding in that breath to watch a spider spinning its web. Below him Kabuto would be doing the same and he'd be the prize to catch in his trap of deceit, yet he'd be knowingly walking into it. His hatred beckoned him to because it was the only thing he needed to keep himself sane enough before Itachi ended it all.

As far as he was concerned, this medic was the dangerous one, teeming with information and skeletons in closets. Whether he liked him or not wasn't the question because in the name of the game Orochimaru was playing, the set rules were plainly to be the sacrificial lamb. His former teammate from Konoha appeared to be dragged into this mess where she was zero percent concerned. Or at least as far as he knew, which had brought him here at the entrance of this vile doctor's lair to try and clarify things. It was the only thing he was here for, anyway. Secrets were Kabuto's specialty and for once, detestably, Sasuke needed to act the part they wanted him to be.

_Just summon the courage and get the fuck over it._

The Uchiha stirred, straightening his back and massaging a crick in his neck, his fingertips pressing deeply into cold sweated skin. He wasn't feeling well. The mere thought of what he was about to face made the familiar annoyance tingle. The stone beneath his sandals were roughly hewn and uneven as he descended into the madness, pushing away the fermenting fright he refused to acknowledge. _I'm stronger._ Even in his head the words rang hollow.

Yet they were true. They had to be. He could kill him as easily as swiping a bug off his shoulder because compared to his brother, he was nothing. Everything was in his favor. He'd honed the skill, the talent. He could care less about whether he lived or not. He had the intent. He had the _hate_...

Sasuke reached the end of the steps and found himself clenching fists and grinding his teeth as he faced a heavy oak door to what formerly served as a cellar. He could feel gooseflesh puckering everywhere on his body, finally relaxing enough to lay a hand against the notches and rivets of the ironbound wood. Ignoring the lightheadedness taking over him, he pushed it open.

Air thin and damp met him, the steel table in the middle of the room reflecting the harsh fluorescent light overhead. The barely swinging bulb was shaded, casting the only visibility in a clear cut circle in the middle of the room and highlighting everything within its reach. Exactly at the point where it ended everything was abruptly plunged into dark shadows.

Its sheer contrast made him ill, his stomach heavy and turning. Formalin cloyed his senses along with a myriad indistinguishably chemical smells, finding himself before the table at the center of the room.

"I need to talk to you," he called out hoping he did not sound as anxious as he felt. His dark gray eyes fixed on Kabuto at a spot in the darkness. Despite not being physically able to see him, he knew where he was.

It did not take long for the medic to appear into the circle of light and pause at the edge, geared up in an apron and rubber gloves, holding a tray full of metal devices. If this were someone other than him he could swear he'd found it comical. Although reality quickly set in and this was _him_ who he detested with such strange emotions. No matter how harmless he appeared, this is a man not to show your back to.

"Ara, ara, such a demanding spoiled child," he cautioned, glasses catching the light for a fraction of a second as he waltzed toward the center of the room and stopped before the table opposite him. "What do you want now?"

There was a smile and the tone was light, playful. _You could fool anyone but me._ The Uchiha frowned, tired of this man's antics and wanton games. There was no other way to get to the heart of truths but be straightforward and the medic was awaiting his concern with his bright false grin and dead cruel eyes, just readying to pounce on whatever he could find wrong in the situation to use against him.

"What does Orochimaru want with Sakura?"

"I see."

Kabuto paused and cast him an unclear wary expression before setting the rubber mat containing his tools on the table. Wiping that all-knowing smirk off his face felt like a small victory, however short it was as his movement caused his glasses to reflect the light at just the right angle and hide the windows to his soul. "You seem very keen at wanting your answers straight from the source so it's quite a wonder you're here. I think I remember telling you that you should ask her yourself."

Sasuke tried to lengthen his patience. He heard the clinking of metal against metal, watched him pick up instrument after instrument and plunk them down on the shiny metal table, watched him position the various devices into a sickeningly obsessive arrangement, prodding and pushing them around by the minutest spaces.

He had been going around for so long about the real reason his former teammate from Konoha was here but it had landed him nowhere. Reading his mentor's suspicious vagueness, persuading Karin to give up something she did not know, they were dead ends. All of it had begun causing so much trouble and still he was left with no idea of what was happening right in front of him. If anyone was bound to know something and talk, it had to be Orochimaru's lying sack of shit.

"I already asked her," he replied, keeping his voice even, "and surprise, surprise, she knows absolutely _nothing_." He suppressed flinging everything off the surface of the table as the person he was talking to continued ignoring him. "Don't expect me to believe that snake doesn't tell you anything. Now talk."

_Click._

The sound of something set down.

_Click._

The sound of something set down.

_Clack_.

The sound of something set down.

_Click._

He had to be deliberately pissing him off. The repetitive motion wasn't stopping, an assortment of blades and forceps and who knew what else were being added to the collection already glinting under the light. The gloved hand of the medic slowly slid a peculiar looking instrument to the far side and his eyes followed the movement with as much loathing as he felt.

_Sssssk..._

_Clack._

When he finally looked back at him, there was a hateful expression in the dark eyes behind those glasses. Kabuto gave a short, bitter laugh knowing he hated being toyed with.

"Sasuke, Sasuke... Sasuke... sometimes I wonder why you always catch on too slow," he goaded, the smug look returning to those annoyingly ordinary features. "Being an Uchiha, I always expected so much from you. But then again, it's another of those instances where you fall short when you keep letting your emotions take over."

_Clack._

The sound of something set down.

A heady swirl of anger made its way through his bloodstream, a rush lighting his nerves afire and straining against his effort to keep it all in. It deconstructed him little by little to give in but he choked it down, pressure mounting. Controlling it. Not reaching out and grabbing something from the table to stab the medic with. What made it all the more bitter was how _he_ knew how much willpower he wasted on this, that deceptive, manipulative fuck who was continuing to watch him as if he were some piece of amusing entertainment. He was going to kill him when the time came and he would bask in ripping off his face with his bare hands...

But it had to wait. He needed to keep calm. He needed a level head for this, no matter how dismissive Kabuto was of his anger.

"Just tell me what you know," he ground out between teeth aching from the rigidity of his jaw.

A chuckle. "No."

_Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out._ "How hard would it be to say something you don't give a shit about anyway?"

That triggered something, the medic stopping in mid-action and those eyes, those detestable, hateful eyes sliced through clear glasses at him, expression frozen. He hated him so.

"You've always been the pushy little prick."

The way he hated him was so unlike the way he felt for his brother yet it was enough to want to give in to the killing intent bubbling just beneath his surface, to grasp at the remaining strings of sanity and calm himself or he'd lose this battle. He had been patient for three years. This few minutes in Kabuto's company should be nothing, yet it was proving difficult to even be polite.

To think he was doing all this for that whiny fan girl all those years ago, granted she grew, but he had yet to see why everyone's time was being wasted especially for her. He didn't know why he didn't call on Suigetsu or even Karin to rip her apart and move on (_and her entrails splattered all over the place and in his mind, romantically fresh as red on the open snow with green eyes wide open..._).

She'd played her role right. She still was part of what made him this way, and all she asked was to go home. He owed her this, and it was messed up because he actually cared to make good on their arrangement.

**~x~**

_A right smile in the wrong direction._

_She had turned her head and he watched as a slow, humbled smile formed on her lips at his explanation that Naruto was the one who saved her. Not him. Not him, who fell victim to his rage._

**~x~**

He owed nothing to any one of them. This was a whimsy sort of notion he was carrying out just because he wanted to shove into Naruto's dumb as shit face he was never going back to them under any of their terms. The blond Hokage wannabe set his eyes on Sakura and as his farewell gift to him he'd return her like some lost dog. He was never going to be the leader of the village, never going to get Sakura, and most of all Sasuke would be long dead before they could make him stay with them.

**~x~**

Sniff_._

___Was she crying?_

___"Just hold on, a little longer…"_

_There was searing on skin and pressure in his ears. His hand crushing hers in a vice-like grip and the cursed seal eating away at his shoulders, chest, neck, scalp, arms__… the hand holding hers, bones bending they were about to snap._

___"Sasuke-kun, don't give up! Please, I know you can hold on!"_

**~x~**

Wouldn't it particularly hurt, knowing they've spent all the rest of their lives for something they would never see happen? Uchiha blood sang to him with revenge and spite. If his brother was crazy enough to kill everyone and flee, he wouldn't be insane to chase him down.

Yet Mikoto, an Uchiha in her own right even without her marriage to his father, had made the mistake of teaching him how to empathize, be soft, how to know and be human.

**~x~**

_Crying._

_Someone was goddamn crying again and he was in excruciating pain, muscles aching everywhere but he couldn't move, couldn't stir a finger. It sounded familiar, though, that crying. Is that______…_ Sakura? Is she_____…_?

Wet.

_There was something heavy on his chest, he was having a hard time breathing. His nerves screamed when he even tried to lift a hand to shove whatever it was off him. Everything was so dark. He needed to breathe badly, he needed air. He had to see and kami-sama it's so hard. _What happened?

_He manages to open his eyes and sees pink hair and puffy eyes and she looks so ugly crying, someone make her stop, even though he knew too well she was crying for him. It's so irritating how she has that dumbstruck look on her face. His throat was protesting when he opened his mouth, tasting blood and strands of her hair and______…_

_"You're__… heavy__…"_

_____"Sasuke-kun! You're alive!"_

**~x~**

The revulsion tasted like bile in his throat.

She stood for so many other people than just Team Seven, and he did _not_ care, but he knew for a fact she still had a family back home. Taking her down with him would make it inevitable how he affected so many others and thus warranted her presence back in Konoha.

Sakura belonged there, with their shitty politics and their failure as a whole. She did not belong with him. He needed to get on with his plans of killing Orochimaru and finding Itachi. There was no place for her in his revenge.

Or maybe it was because she reminded him so much of…_  
_

**~x~**

_"You should always be careful, you know. Here, let me patch that up before we eat."_

_He frowned at the cotton and the ointments set out beside her, looking upon her face unmarred yet by age. She looked so comfortable, so at ease. How he wished things would be as easy for him with his father as the way he gained her adoration and love. Her eyes were bright with a smile._

_"Your brother finally made time to come and join us for supper."_

**~x~**

_**Mikoto**_.

Blood rose to his head from the violent rejection of the comparison, his vision dimming for a moment from the lightheadedness. It was his choice to keep her alive, to bring her back. He would not allow her to forget how he could easily have let her die. She had to be grateful for this.

Suddenly the bulb overhead shut itself off, plunging both him and Kabuto in darkness for a moment. A few seconds he was blinded as his eyes adjusted to the dark when the light, just as sudden, decided to flare back on and bring back the world to them, disorienting him even more with the steeping hate for this man before him.

Sasuke leaned over the steel table, infinitely closer to the medic to get his point across, fingertips light on the cold metal as the bulb continued dimming and flickering from the irregular surges in his chakra, the current rising from his skin and filling the air with the smell of ozone.

"Don't touch her," he whispered, seeing through the glare reflected on Kabuto's glasses and into those deep, dark murderous eyes. "You don't know what I'm capable of."

A grin formed slowly on those lips, sadistically so, taunting him, capable of unhinging him. The implied threat of killing Orochimaru did not seem to register with the spy.

"You can't," Kabuto told him as he set the last tool he was holding in place, a plain scalpel, before matching his stance and leaning over, "because you've been protecting the wrong person, Sasuke-kun."

He stiffened, the medic tilting his head down ever so slightly to peer at him over his glasses the way his redheaded teammate always did, meeting him eye to eye, darkest gray to darkest brown. His hand itched to sink a fist in his vainglorious face.

"You're lying," he hissed, unable to stop the tremors running through him.

"Do you think I'd lie about something like this?"

"You've been whinging like a bitch ever since I came. You're just angry Orochimaru trusts me as he does."

Sharp laughter pierced the thin air, ringing in the mustiness of the bare basement, hurting his ears, cackling in his face. He didn't care if anyone would have heard it but only someone arrogant enough with alarming knowledge could laugh that way. This was unimaginable. He couldn't have seen this far into things about to happen.

"True, I hated _you_. Because your plans were so clear from the very beginning, dear Sasuke." The sterile white bulb buzzed and dimmed haphazardly. "I won't let you get the best of him, because you're just a little shit in our plans!"

_Breathe in._

That did it.

The movement was fast and spurred by immediate impulse, leaving no time to think. All he could see was red, his hand grabbing a scalpel and with a direct thrust, stabbed it toward the man in front of him, a hint of bared teeth, narrowed vision seeing only those maddened eyes. He was blinded, as if everything were moving at such a torturesome pace, the bulb distracting as it crackled and fizzled itself on and off in rapid succession. He could feel everything from the blade like it were an extension of himself, when it pressed onto cloth, pressed onto skin, breaking it, muscle and sinew feebly rejecting the force but the strength too much that they snap.

_Hold._

Globes of hot blood heavily pattered onto the steel table, dripping ruby circles onto the reflective surface and seeping through the thick material of heavy-duty cloth, the vicious act not enough to wipe the fiendish grin off the medic's face.

Sasuke glared at the point of contact and grew enraged.

_Breathe out._

Kabuto's pierced hand was trembling, not because he was feeling pain, but from stopping the momentum of the Uchiha's fist. An inch or two of silver blade protruded out the back, slicing cleanly through the metacarpals as he squeezed down the fingers of his injured hand around the boy's fist.

Still he refused to show any sign he'd been affected, like he couldn't feel anything. Instead, a slow sick smile spread across those moist lips, morphing into a perverse grin. _Monster_. Eyes were said to be the windows to the soul. Sasuke knew he'd find none here, and true to that he didn't. The spy had already sold it to some demon in Orochimaru's form.

"Do you mind trying not to kill me for a few minutes?" the sing-song voice taunted, dripping with ridicule.

Sasuke roughly withdrew his hand along with the blade, intentionally more forceful than enough. It scattered blood in a wide arching trail of drops sideways from the table and climbing up the dusty concrete wall. A row of white teeth gleamed, causing shivers to bubble under his skin. No sign of pain, no tremor, no wince. For a moment he hesitated, his anger temporarily snuffed out because of the reaction of the medic… or lack of it. He controlled his breathing though he knew his heart was acting up, only hoping it didn't show how he much he was flustered.

"You better start talking," he muttered hoarsely, his hand hurting from the way he clenched the scalpel's metal body.

Kabuto's grin descend into a horrid smile, hiding those blinding white teeth behind a smirk. Him shaking his head slightly, slowly, rubbing emotional salt into emotional wounds.

"Fine. Can I have my scalpel back, _please_?"

"You can have it in your throat if you don't talk."

The change in the medic's tone was as sudden as it always had been when pushed too far.

"_And I'll have it in your eyes if you don't shut up._"

The mask slipped, his accent grown harsh, painful, ripping like they did through Sasuke's ears. It wasn't so loud as that Kabuto had to raise his voice. No, but it echoed, ringed of bitchslap memories he didn't want to remember, of hate and anger and madness and ecstasy, and all things he never wanted to feel. Sasuke trembled inside and tried to hide it, feeling the weakening of his knees, the weakening of his chest, the weakening of his objective in this massive, uncontrollable, cheatless game that never seemed to have an end. Only his resolve remained, hoping, _praying_ it was enough to make him appear as unaffected as he wanted to be.

This wasn't the way he imagined things to go. He thought this had ended. This couldn't be, this was supposed to be done with…

**~x~**

"_Sasuke, you forgot to bring your kunais today. Did your brother drop them off at school?"_

_He looked up, that pretty, pretty, innocent smile on his mother's face, reserved only for him. At school he had to make up for lack of equipment when he sparred, in the form of long gashes and bleeding wounds. And sliced hair. An asymmetrical line shorn at the right side of his head and exposed the pale skin of his neck, much too obvious for his mother not to notice._

"_Mom. You know Itachi-niisan is busy. But I did well, I got perfect marks!" he grinned, through the sting of injuries and the throb of his bruises._

_He would never tell her he ended up crying after he locked himself into the boys' bathroom, because his hero never appeared and he had to stand alone, even though he pulled it off. He never told her he wanted her to hug him, and tell him everything would be all right, and that she would be always there for him to run to…_

**~x~**

He glared, sharingan bleeding on.

_Breathe in._

"I don't care what you think you can do to me," he said icily, stony eyes on the medic as he banged the scalpel down onto the metal table. The other glinting, reflecting instruments jumped out of their perfect formation, chakra leaking out of every pore of his body, not caring the air was beginning to hum with electricity. The familiar feel of his fine hair rising in reaction to the charging of the atmosphere was lustful and nostalgic. "If you don't want me involving you in any of my affairs with Orochimaru, tell me why Sakura is so important to him."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Bullshit. You're the one who's healing him, you're the one doing everything to save his life, you're the one–"

"You don't know _any_thing–"

"_You're the one_ who does _every_ fucking_ thing_ he tells you to do, now _tell me what he wants with her_!"

The fluorescent white light was fizzing once again, more shadows than light as their surroundings descended into the crackling of current, his demand echoing in the empty basement.

Damaged hand closed over Sasuke's fist on the table, tightly gripping as the torn muscles flexed without problem of the injury as if nothing ever happened, and in the darkness a healing green glow enveloped it. He stood still and he saw_heard_**felt **Kabuto lean over, lips barely close to his ear his breath became almost unbearable to feel, and he wanted to push him away but he couldn't _couldn't_ like so many times – kami-sama help him – times he let him have his way before. The unharmed hand suddenly grabbed hold of his nape (_where Kaa-san soothed those shorn strands_) to keep him in place _(and where his lips brushed so many times before and it's disgusting, making him guilty and helpless, and just _yearning_ for it to continue_…) to make sure he heard every single word through the sizzling current ripping through the atmosphere around them. The ozone smell was now overpowering with his state of blindness and vision in the flickering room.

"You know…" scorning, prejudicial, odious, "you cannot _imagine_… that Sakura can completely destroy whatever your perfect plans are… and without her even knowing it."

In the rapidly dizzying flashing light, he slowly met those eyes with his glowing bloodlimit, so close yet so far. No deception, pure arrogance.

"Tell me why I should believe you," he whispered, the intensely accelerating tango of luminosity and obscurity erasing everything else but that heavy voice and those dark eyes and that repulsive, repulsive, _repulsive_ touch.

"Because…"

A blinding white spark sizzled throughout the basement room followed by the explosion of the bulb overhead, busting into pieces and showering them both with fine glass shards tinkling onto the metal table and concrete floor. Then… darkness. Nothingness. Blindness. Silence. Just the heavy feel of Kabuto's hand too tight on his neck and shoulder, and the grating, low speech that brushed hot breath on his ear with every word.

"…why else would Orochimaru-sama want her here than to keep you tied down? If he knows your weakness, he'll do everything to exploit it."

Even without sight he could see the wanton smile making itself known through the medic's tone and the conceit lacing his words. He couldn't speak, so weak and terrified of how reality proved his suspicions wrong and was turning out to be far worse.

"You've been protecting the wrong person, Sasuke."

**ooo000ooo**

Cold sweat clung underneath his clothes, the uncomfortable humidity leaving him as he ran up the stone steps and burst back into the living room. The warm dryness of the landing enveloped him as soon as he stepped back into the real world, the surreality of the basement's brutal feel and the medic's guilt-laden touch already deserted for the warm wooden floor beneath his feet and the hotness of the fire beside him. He hated it. He hated himself for wanting it. Needing it.

A deep breath. Another. Another. Another. Anot–

"Sasuke, are you okay?"

Startled by the interrupting female voice, he turned to the source, slightly out of breath, and faced his redheaded teammate. He hadn't noticed her in his clouded haste. It was a bad sign but the sight of her gave him a sense of security that assured he wasn't alone in this fight. Those red eyes saw everything, and right now they narrowed behind her eyeglasses at him and delved into the heart of his problem.

"Did he do anything to you?" she demanded from her position on the couch, searching his face, his stance, his expression for anything to glean information from. He knew he didn't look good enough at that moment for her to assess him as okay.

"I'm fine." He was still frozen in place, staring at her.

"You don't look fine," she retorted crisply, her voice dropping down to almost a whisper and getting more agitated with each passing second. "What happened to you? You know I can take him on anytime he tries to–"

Sasuke moved across the room in an instant, clamping down a hand on her mouth before she could say anything else and giving her a warning glare before she yanked his hand off to return an angry look. It would help no one to spread around the nasty piece of information he was hiding, he was sure. With Karin's temper and sometimes her explosive control of emotions, keeping it down was hard even though he knew she was only trying to help.

"Don't. I'll explain later. Just tell me where Sakura is," he ordered, unaware how close their faces were to each other's.

"And why are you looking for her at a time like this?" replied Karin, red eyes flashing. "If Kabuto is starting to notice anything at all, we should start to move. You _know_ how dangerous this could get if we're caught."

"I know. And we wouldn't get anything done if we have complications from bringing along someone who wasn't included in the plan _at all_."

"Then we'll just use her as or medic," his teammate hissed, growing edgier. "It's as simple as that, Sasuke. You can't be just deciding brashly when Heb–"

For a second time he shushed her with a hand on her mouth, making sure his point was as clear as crystal by refusing to let her go even as she tried pulling it away. He could understand his teammate's anxiety to maintain their safety because of the ever present risk of the body transfer. He might be strong enough to neutralize his mentor but he still wasn't sure how his clever mind worked. Being one of the Legendary Three meant he was never to be underestimated. He wouldn't take any chances.

His teammate may lack control over herself but she was strong enough for him to consider her in any imminent event they would be involved in and have her on his side; she was a perfect tool.

"Karin, _I know_. Just tell me where she is and we'll work on it from there."

**ooo000ooo**

It was already nighttime, a few minutes past the setting of the sun, and the world outside was as cold as he remembered when he stepped out the back door. Violet sky frosted with stars reminded him of the journey to this place, unmarred even by the soft yellow light coming from inside the house. The view would definitely be much different from the other side of the house, where the harsh lights of the streets and noise and people existed.

_Must be why you're here, then_, Sasuke thought, his dark gray eyes going over to the familiar form by the edge of the wooden porch, legs dangling as she watched the heavens. Kabuto's words came back to haunt him and he swallowed the rock forming in his throat.

Soundlessly he moved closer to her, disappearing from the shaft of light spilling from the doorway, plunging himself into the shadows of the night with only yellow rays from the window between them. She still had her back against him, not seeming to have noticed she was not alone, wearing only the shirt and pants from that morning against the weather. He could have given anything at that moment to know what was going on in her head, to know what she was thinking, know her plans and her thoughts and her impressions of them, of him.

He would have given much to know if she was even a real threat. He'd vowed if she turned to be a burden, he'd kill her himself. He had not forgotten that and with the dawning of new information, it was time to find out.

When he reached to his side, he discovered he forgot his sword and balked for a second. Watching her to make sure she did not turn around, his hand automatically drew a kunai from his sleeve. He was only here because Karin asked him to find her for supper but his self control was waning.

Acknowledging Sakura was not going to end their plans anytime soon, he had submitted to putting off killing her until he was completely sure she was out to destroy Hebi. Despite those consolation words to his redheaded teammate, the first sight of her after his conversation in the dungeon refreshed the threat she posed. This didn't look to favor her.

He simply couldn't risk it, clenching the weapon in his hand, watching the fragility of her existence as she lay exposed and vulnerable sitting there. She did not know he was there, no idea someone wanted her to die.

Holding the kunai to his chest he tried to stem the beating of his heart. The obligation to his cause magnified his nervousness. How would he dispose of her? Would he hide her body, pretend he did not know when Orochimaru asked for her? Would he lay waste to her here in the open, leave her to be found by whoever who cared and try to take on the snake sennin as he was bound to do somewhere in the future?

_I want to kill you._ The Uchiha's resentment for her grew. How was it possible she could not foresee how someone might want her dead? She would cease to exist at the mere whim of his and yet she had no notion of what was about to happen, probably barely even managing to turn around and see her killer in her last moments. She trusted Karin to an extent, his demented teacher, even the vileness of Kabuto. She trusted _him_ wholly, and most likely believed he wouldn't break his promise. He hated her so much for being this way.

He moved closer, into the swathe of the yellow light spilling from the window, the gold rays on porcelain skin and fine features lighting him like a dark angel, black metal of the knife he held shimmering. Yet she did not take notice, still concentrating on her dreams and her unnecessary fantasies. It was revolting how she was so dense his jaw hurt from clenching his teeth shut.

From behind him there was a sudden movement and a hit of sweet perfume lingering in the air as familiar to him as its owner.

"Oh, hey! You guys are still here," came the redhead's voice, shattering the silence.

Sasuke could not move, rooted to the spot and illuminated in all his intentions from the front, his back hiding all of it. The blonde had turned around with a smile to greet Karin's interruption and instead green eyes fell on him, the words she was about to say dissolving in the freezing air. Her surprise morphed into mortified understanding as her gaze slid down to the weapon he held. A glare compelled her to continue playing mute.

"Food's ready in ten minutes, you guys better come inside," continued the girl behind him, oblivious to what had transpired. "Last one to finish does the dishes."

And with her last words she left, footsteps discernible on the the bare floor fading away. By now Sakura had to be fully appreciative of his purpose, watching him carefully. Had his teammate been a few minutes too late she'd have found a Konoha chunnin drowned in her own blood and an avenger ready to move on.

"Is there something wrong?" she asked tentatively, her eyes never leaving the kunai.

Confronting her wasn't as easy as he'd like, to put an end to more suspicions and hope for the correct answers. The older medic could have misinformed him on purpose to set him off track. Those green eyes looked innocent and genuinely scared. _But for what?_

"I'll ask you once," his voice low and menacing, dark gray irises constricting into pinpoint pupils from the light. "Are you hiding something from me?"

For some reason her silence was more unbearable than anything she could have said, and the longer it stretched the more he felt annoyed. She was stalling, gaze fleeting to the side, anywhere but him. There was the temptation to ask her again, demand for her to say something, but he knew doing it would only be for nothing.

After the longest time she turned her eyes back up at him, silvery brows drawn together in chagrin. He could see her forming words, rephrasing them, finding a way to get past him. Before she even parted those shell pink lips, he knew what her response would be.

"Don't you trust me anymore?"

His patience snapped.

Before he knew what was happening Sakura ducked as the kunai flew past her, his body reacting, lunging at her and sending her on her back with a satisfying dull crack as he crashed her into the floorboards. His hands were wound tightly around her throat as he held her down with his weight, a million thoughts flooding his head. This was hardly the first time he'd attacked her, but it was the first time she'd decided to fight back.

He'd been told of how she gained the massive strength of her own mentor, and there wasn't enough time for it to sink in when his chokehold was pulled away like nothing and he was brutishly thrown sideways into the snow with an easy push.

"You," he growled, scowling through the melting white powder.

The actuality of her strength came as a surprise. It did not help the girl who managed to manhandle him without problem looked nothing of the part, blonde and docile and appearing terrified on the wooden platform. Her slender build, her harmless appearance, it was all appallingly deceptive. He'd underestimated her. His conclusion was startling, to him at least. If she wanted it rough, he'd give her rough.

"Sasuke, what are you–"

His fist smashed into the wood as she pushed herself out of the way before it hit, herself falling onto the snow and frozen soil where he hooked a leg under her as she tried to run away, sending her crashing back down onto hardened earth and slush. She got back up, a green fire alive in her eyes.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" she snapped, dodging another kunai and slipping on the wet snow. It struck the tree behind her and she pulled it out, immediately ducking to narrowly evade another fist he threw, the trunk shattering with splinters flying everywhere.

The way she fought irked him, always defending, avoiding, such cowardice brought out his worst. He moved too fast, appearing before her as she tried to run through the woods when – in a move he failed to read – she slashed upwards in his direction with his own blade. He'd leaped back and it missed by a fraction, almost too late as it tore through his shirt.

Both of them stood still at the ripping sound, his gray eyes boring into her with his chest laid open to the chill of the air. She blanched, face full of distress looking from him to the weapon in her hands.

"Sasuke, I didn't mean to…"

He took a step toward her. If she hadn't been planning on hurting him with her defensive stance then, it completely changed now.

"Wait! Wait, just listen to me for a seco–"

He charged.

To her favor he could say she put up a decent fight, using eerily powerful blocks to a kick, sliding punches away, a tad shy from being pathetic. He was the much better fighter, absorbing how she was overly concentrating to counter basic taijutsu moves and when she flung the kunai she was holding, she made a big mistake. Her natural openness betrayed her as she believed it bought her enough time, green eyes searching for some place she might have advantage at.

Without warning he appeared behind her, grabbing slim wrists before he slammed her hard into the ground and twisted her arms behind her back, ignoring the whimpers of pain and protest.

"What have you been talking to Kabuto about?" he hissed, voice low in wariness of eavesdroppers.

"Sasuke, stop it!"

He was beginning to find it hard to keep her down, warring against her strength. Her arms were slick from the melting snow and no matter how much effort he was exerting, one hand or the other kept slipping out of his grip. It had been repeated to him over a thousand times from snake lips, the seemingly useless tidbit of random information never registering with him until now. Sakura was being taught by the princess Tsunade, who could destroy towns with her little finger._  
_

_How much stronger could you go?_ he found himself asking her. It wasn't possible to get much stronger, right?

Wrong. A fine-boned wrist wrenched free yet again, grabbing a handful of snow as she twisted around under him and threw it in his face.

The white powder blinded him and she wriggled free of his grasp without difficulty, hearing her stumble to her feet and back away a few steps when he cursed loudly. She kept a careful eye on him as he glared at her from the ground, angrily blinking away ice crystals. He believed himself extremely patient when interacting with people, no matter what their intentions were. The only glaring exceptions seemed to be three unimportant individuals he had the ill luck to be assigned on a team with, this sad excuse of a kunoichi possibly now the most irritating of them all.

"Sasuke, please listen," she beseeched, pale, bluish hands held up in an entreaty of peace. "You don't have to–"

"Shut up," he snapped, clumsily pulling out another kunai from the numbness in his limbs. His loathing of her very existence made him want to do anything but listen to her right now. Without kusanagi, he could promise her death would not be an easy one.

He shivered as the wind picked up, cold and dripping wet. Before anyone would barge in he needed to end this, and as he stood up from the muddy slush it was when he noticed she was in the same sorry state he was in. She shook in the tiniest breeze, damp silvery hair clinging to her face, clothes soaked with melted ice sticking to her body. He knew what to do.

A surge of electrical energy sizzled onto the small knife and the disbelief registered in her wide green eyes as he threw it, a hissing bright blue arc following the trail it sliced through the air as she dodged. It would have missed had it been a plain projectile but the tiny space between her wet skin and the metal was enough for the electricity to bridge the gap. The Uchiha didn't wince when it hit, a high-pitched scream shrill in the air as the current ran through her body in jagged cerulean rings, and he walked over as she dropped limply to her knees to fall forward on the ground.

"I've always wanted to do that," he huffed between deep breaths that condensed in the frigid air, pulling on her shoulder to turn her over and planting a leg on each side of her.

There was no fight left in his former teammate, merely waiting in exhaustion as he pressed a hand on her throat to support his weight while he drew out his last kunai. When he wearily laid the pointed end above where her heart was, emerald eyes searched his face.

"All this is pointless," she said breathlessly, feeling the rise and fall of her chest with his hand on the wet shirt as she struggled for air. "You can't kill me."

"I can," he insisted, wanting to be mad at being challenged but feeling his emotions seep away into the cold. It was already dark, and they were partly on the spot where the ground was illuminated by the golden block of light from the window. The little snow that lay untouched sparkled, soggy mush reflecting onto their wet clothes and the water droplets on their skin.

"Then do it."

He fell silent, swallowing to the sounds of the night and their breathing. Even as he tried summoning whatever he had been feeling before, all the rage and passion consuming him, the weapon remained pressed against her but no further. All what she'd done and sacrificed came back into perspective, even the point of why he attacked her.

The light burns of the electrocution was fading from her skin, her healing chakra working unconsciously. Right here and now he could kill her, end it all for good. If the worst came to happen, he could end it as easily as he could at this moment. There was no threat to his plan in Sakura. She could continue living... on his whim.

"Do it," she ordered, voice rising.

He glared at her, doing nothing.

"Sasuke, I said _do it_!"

Another second passed and suddenly his hand was snatched away from her throat, the other one holding the kunai backhanded with such a force it hurtled over the house to be lost over the village. Instinctively he was about to get off her when her iron grip on his wrist held him back, in one move reversing their position and thrust him back to the ground and straddling him. One powerful palm pressed down on his chest, the other a fist pulled back in line with his face.

Sasuke tried to shove her away but couldn't, her strength so inhuman there was no give when he tried to move. When he caught her fist descending he turned his head to the side, his fingers biting futilely into her arm when it smacked into the ground beside him, splashing icy water at two of them. He felt his hair and tasted in his mouth.

"Never threaten unless you're ready to deliver," she whispered quietly, the weight on his chest lifting when she took her hand back. He turned to look back up at her. "It makes you look weak."

He wondered if anyone bothered to check on them with all the noise they'd been making, and if they'd only written it off as training. It was the easiest scapegoat. Orochimaru didn't want anyone touching Sakura, and to say he'd been after her with killing intent wasn't wise.

"Get off me," he managed hoarsely.

Her face smoothed itself of all emotion, reverting to neutrality with dark circles under her eyes.

"You have trust issues," she said, ignoring him. He didn't know whether to mock her for that, seeing as everything but the last three years of his life had been a lie. He was about to say something scathing when she took his cold, blue fingers in her cold, blue hands, shaking and frowning and teary-eyed he was silenced. She held them against the warm beating of her heart.

"I followed you all the way out here," she whispered, trying hard to keep her voice from wavering. "What do you possibly think can make me change my mind about helping you?"

He realized he was still staring at the glittering black sky when Karin poked back her red head out the back door and called them back for a waiting supper, and Sakura had already been halfway there.

* * *

**AN:** You know you want to review. If not for the last scene, it's to ask questions about the Kabuto and Sasuke scene. ;D Muahaha


	9. IX: Razbliuto

(Re-Edited Version)

Ohoho :D Take the time to check out a fanart given to me by Laniol for this story. It's osum, link at lanie-mccarry (insert dot here) tumblr (insert another dot) com (forward slash) image/51266054057 or try the one at my profile page, whatever humps your camels. Virtual cookies to those who can guess which scene it is. :D

There were those who were sorta... disturbed by the implications of the last chapter, and then those who seemed to not catch it. Well, not even sort of. They were extremely disturbed. lol

Ah, my apologies. That was the purpose of it though. If you're part of the unfortunate (fortunate?) ones who have not caught the "implication", let's have a refresher, shall we? :D

Reviews and criticisms are always welcome!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, only the theories presented here and your soul.

* * *

**Gods of Vindication  
**Part IX: Razbliuto**  
**

"_You love me but you don't know who I am, I'm torn between this life I lead and where I stand…_"

* * *

She bridged the gap between the netherworlds of sleep and Lee-awakened-ness in a millisecond, snapping up in the bed and wondering what had happened for her to be on high strung alert.

Aware she was breathing carefully as if treading dangerous ground, Sakura ran a hand through silvery pink hair to get it out of her face. Something felt awfully wrong yet when green eyes were cast to her surroundings, the room was as normal as could be. The four poster bed was all tangled up with her, a mess of scrolls and papers overflowing the huge darkwood desk, book spines all waxed in their places on the span of shelves across the wall. Nothing strange, but she felt it as if it were hiding in plain sight.

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed to try and investigate, what woke her suddenly made itself known.

"Oh, you think I don't see what the fuck you're doing?"

Sakura grimaced. _Way to ruin a morning, Karin._

The redhead's voice carried through the heavy oaken door of her room as though she was standing just outside it, anywhere along the hallway. By the bluish dawn light filtering through the windows of her room, she could safely assume it was early morning and slumped back into bed, already diving under the covers to catch some sleep.

"Oh my, what big accusations you have," the responding oily tone caught her unawares and froze her from pulling the comforter over her head. It was so soft she almost missed it and her lips pressed together in concentration. "First that Uchiha brat, now you? I won't be surprised if our guest would suddenly mouth off at me then."

_That's..._

She remained stock still as though they could see her listening in on their private conversation, straining to be able to hear clearly. Eavesdropping wasn't exactly something she liked to do and actually frowned upon, but it admittedly was a tool a shinobi needed to survive. She couldn't exactly call her case a life and death situation though it would serve to her benefit to happen across any information. Her curiosity was intensely piqued.

During ordinary days there was nothing of importance passed on to her, only the facade needed to put up day to day living with the rest of the inhabitants of the house. Sasuke was too tight lipped and refused to allow any leeway for her in whatever he was planning. Karin was chattier, indulging her in what the avenger lacked in the speech department, yet she also would not talk about anything risky. Kabuto and Orochimaru weren't exactly social with the rest of them, and her meetings with either involved only one on one interaction which her old teammate, as per usual his paranoid self, found unacceptable.

"This was supposed to be over, god damn you! And I find him yesterday like you—"

"Like I _what_, exactly? Pray Karin, raise your voice because I'm pretty sure the neighbor across the street can't hear you yet."

Sakura could feel her heart thrumming a quick, breathless beat in her chest, her hands shaking. She always felt uncomfortable when people argued where she could hear them, wiping sweating palms on her pajama legs. Despite not caring whether either of the people outside in the hallway killed each other — good riddance — the negative vibes bothered her even enough though she had the least idea of what they were talking about.

More muffled wordings and low voices replaced what she could originally hear and she redoubled her efforts to listen in, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and sinking her feet into the thick lushness of the carpet. Squinting at the door in the darkness of the early morning, making sure to keep her breathing in check and her chakra down, she was rewarded for her effort when she caught harsh whispers.

"—serious!? You're doing to him what you did to every one of us who wanted Orochimaru's favor. You might let him believe you'd moved on but you can't fool _me_."

"Are you listening to yourself? This is just rich. Where do you get the gall to accuse me? Did he send you?"

"You're fucking unbelievable."

"Don't tell me you're cornering me just to lecture me, are you?"

Sakura's brow furrowed as she stared at the gold patterns on the dark blue carpet. The mocking tone used by the medic seemed to have effectively silenced the redhead, hearing nothing but the street noise and barking dogs filtering into her room no matter how hard she tried. It became mildly annoying how daytime chatter managed to infiltrate this section of the village.

Tucking a lock of pinkish gold hair behind an ear, she eased back into the deep mattress of her bed when the male voice picked up again in a condescending, brash admonition.

"It's been a year. Just give it up already."

A long, drawn-out pause.

"You're maybe a bit older but just between the two of us? _You_ give up."

"Oh, yes. Of course, I did that already. Mind you, he wouldn't have been the one who kept coming back if wasn't even remotely consensual. "

Karin's snort of disbelief followed.

Despite the chilly air and the thin cloth of her shirt, Sakura felt her cheeks redden at the insinuations flying back and forth. _Much more interesting love lives than mine._ Although she was in no way concerned over what was being discussed or why, she wondered at the burning need to continue listening in on this nonsense. And the feeling of wrongness returned, as though there was something important she was missing. What was it? _Who are you talking about?_

"_Remotely_ consensual? Not what he tells me. Orochimaru might want to know how you _lie_."

Clapping and a short laugh. It took her a few moments to realize it was to mock Karin.

"I just knew you were going to use that on me. Do you think he even cares who the—"

The wind whistled through the window crevices, muffling their voices.

By now her pulse was hammering in her throat and she felt she was running out of breath, with a very distinct desire to curl up under her thick blanket to block out the rest of their words. An inking of who they were pertaining to was beginning to fester in her head, something she felt was too strange for the person in her suspicions. There had to be someone else. It couldn't be him.

Closer. She needed to get closer, ever more closer to the door, she _had_ to hear who it was. There had to be confirmation somewhere in their conversation. She wished she had the courage to get down on all fours and press her ear against the cold dark oak.

"—stay away from him. You keep forgetting you tried the same thing on me, I can see right through your fucking mask!"

His dark chuckle. It made the fine hairs on Sakura's arm rise. It did not matter that she was barely able to hear them, or that they weren't even shouting. The whole thing made her feel queasy.

"Tried the same thing on _you_? Are you so deluded you forget you were throwing yourself at me once you found out I was Orochimaru's right hand man?"

The slap cracked the morning air and it jolted through her. She found her hands clenching the bed sheets. What was wrong with these people? The following reply by the gray-haired medic was clear as day in a monotone, puzzling her even further.

"Surprising the girl I knew would turn traitor for a pretty face."

Another stinging slap of skin on skin rang in her ears, followed by a loud huff and stomping feet that faded away into the early morning. Deep in the secure darkness and soft comfort of her bed, Sakura felt cold.

**ooo000ooo**

_The door slammed close behind him and he trembled in his rain soaked clothes that gathered a pool beneath his sandals. Sasuke glared at him sitting down by the table reading his books, ignoring the stinging sensation of ripped flesh from the festering wound in his side._

_"You're late."_

_His deceptively sunny voice made him twitch, made his blood run cold in this already dank underground lair. Shadows lurked everywhere, only warded off by the lone lamp swinging by the table. His mislike of the place did nothing to ease his discomfort at having to deal with the people who tested his patience. Even as droplets slid into his dark eyes from his equally dark hair, he never took his gaze off him just sitting there._

_This was a long time coming. He wasn't numb to the happenings, to the accidental brushes, lingering looks._

_Slowly unraveling the white cloth on his arms, he never looked away from the bored gaze, chin in hand on the table. When the damp bloodstained strips dropped to the floor by his feet his glare turned to the fire burning orange and red, flitting around in its little grate as though mocking him._

_His mood soured further, defiantly meeting his eyes with dark gray insolence._

_"I don't remember asking for you." The hearth crackled behind him as he stepped forward, warming his back and heating the skin parted in a wet red smile._

_"No one sent me."_

_"Just go away," Sasuke seethed, hating how he was shivering._

_"I just want to help," he shrugged lackadaisically. "You're bleeding."_

_"Stop bullshitting me," he spat, black hair rebelliously slithering back to curtain his face even as he raked it back into his scalp. "I know what you want from me. You're not making me do it."_

_"Really now?" He wanted to wipe that smirk on the floor. "You're going to pretend you're not bleeding yourself half to death?"_

_He glared, feeling his nails trace crescent half moons into his palm. When he stood up he took an instinctive step closer to the fireplace, hissing a curse and tasting bile rising in his throat._

_"One step closer and I swear, kami-sama, I'll kill you," he threatened, molten anger finding its way to his head. He was tired from training but exhaustion would not stop him from doing what he yearned to do for so long. The older one's mere presence was poison._

_"That's funny. I thought you believed in the will of fire, not gods, Sasuke-kun."_

_He crossed the line, moving out of the way of the table, and he lunged with blade in hand._

_Defeat was potently bitter as in a fluid motion he was slammed into the floor, head shoved down against the stone hearth and face close to the embers. The Uchiha were known for their control of fire, it could not hurt him, but this was a painful blow to his ego. He could chalk up the weight holding him down to the unnatural circumstances he was in, the hand twisting his arm, the knee drove into his back._

_With as much vile intensity as he could come up with, in a low voice intoned, "Whatever you do to me, he's not gonna value you the way he values me."_

**ooo000ooo**

The black wood felt as smooth and cold as marble beneath her bare feet, gold slit-irised eyes watching her with an intensity always present in the snake sennin's composure whenever he asked her to do this. She felt a bead of sweat roll down the side of her face despite the chill of the air.

"How inte_res_ting," he murmured, finally breaking into the eerie grin embodying his whole personality. "Tsunade-hime is quite the slacker."

She lay silent.

The first time he did this to her, she was promptly sat down on the piano bench in his apartments on the top floor of the house, locked under a fierce stare for the longest ten minutes of her life. He did nothing to her. Simply watched in intense quiet, she endured his roving his gaze from head to foot as his slow gait brought him walking around her. The inspection had made her feel as if she were a particularly interesting piece of specimen he were about to dissect.

As it went on her thoughts were jumping to all sorts of conclusions. He was mad, insanely intelligent. What would he do to her? What was he thinking? Why was he doing this? She'd imagined he would sooner or later grab her or beat her or rape her, make her hurt. Torture her for information or simply for fun. She would face anything he was planning with a mental mantra, and she could see herself bathing in her own blood and keeping her silence for the sake of Konoha.

Any of it would have fit the description she was fed over the years. Orochimaru was wicked. Yet he had done nothing. His pale lips smirked and his expression unnerved but that was the extent of it. Once the sennin had leaned back against the polished baby grand and began with mundane questions, it blew away all the stories she heard of this man.

She even had tried discerning whether he was tacitly trying to interrogate her. Nothing, and now again his eyes were glued to her face like there was nothing else in the world he could do. Each time he asked for her he'd spend a couple of hours with light chatting and that would be the gist of the whole time she spent in her enemy's company.

Sakura wondered if this man, tall and legendary and scary, finally went crazy.

Every session he'd ask for a vivid description of what her own mentor did, a third of the Legendary Three. Every session he'd wait quietly for her to finish without as much as an interruption. He'd nod once she was done and begin with his queries. At first she balked and he had told her to withhold anything she thought was too important to share and she began with the boring details of an ordinary working day. In fact, she could stretch it and call him gracious.

"So," he started, blinking slowly like a cat after the end of her telling of another stressful day of the Hokage, "I think that's it for now."

"No questions?" she curiously asked after a brief pause. The way he was always satisfied by what she told him was strange.

"Well," the sennin grinned, suddenly getting to his feet and shooing her off the chair before he pulled it up to the piano. His talking had taken on a more energetic tone as though he held his excitement in check. "Since you're very adamant today, do you play?"

Her eyebrows rose and she stepped closer, watching as deft hands raised the cover and exposed the black and yellowing keys. Immediately soft notes took to the thin, frigid air. Orochimaru's fingers smoothly flowed and pressed with a familiar precision, a foot against the pedals, and Sakura watched as the man lost himself in the light, quick tune of a few notes before pausing to smile at her and wait for an answer.

It was bizarre, seeing a murderer and traitor devoted to such a simple thing. Remnants of a bedtime story tugged at her consciousness, of a bard hired to drive out a plague of demons with his songs in some small town. When they refused what was due him, he played so beautifully that the children of the town followed him away and never were seen again. She was probably the latest child.

She knew he created Hidden Sound and though it never crossed her mind before, it made sense he was adept at music. Never in her life did she anticipate something like this. _It's like he's a different person._

"My dear, you mustn't have a sickly old man wait all day like this," he tsked, moving over to make space on the leather bench before taking her wrist in a cool hand and pulling her beside him._  
_

Sakura didn't know how, but those sharp eyes were hawking how she tried to imitate his poise, feeling awkward and unsure as one set of white fingers descended upon a matching set of keys and an impatient glint of gold urged her to do the same. The sound of three strings merging into one unified resonance lingered in the air.

_Kami-sama, he's weird._

"Go on."

What was it that Tsunade had always admired about her? Wasn't it how she was able to imitate her actions during an operation, able to successfully go through it step by step as if she were a natural? It all lay in the basics, of how she took in information. She could treat this stupid little thing like one of Tsunade's exercises to humor the snake sennin. Just watch what he does, those snowy hands brighter than the ivory they lay on. This would be easy.

It took her a few moments to get the note right, her hand finding the arrangement of the keys strange as she stretched them to find the right ones. There was a _humph_ of appreciation as now both of Orochimaru's hands moved and pressed into a different set. She felt the embarrassment warming her cheeks and she struggled to catch up to his familiarity of the instrument.

Change. Copy. Change. Copy. The sound the piano made was a halting melody, like a record skipping.

"Did you also make Sasuke do this?" came blurting out of her mouth as her frustration mounted. He was too fast, and as soon as she managed to do what he was doing, or what she thought he was doing, those long fingers moved gracefully and flitted to the next form.

A dark, feminine chuckle came beside her and she looked up in surprise, at the gleeful smirk of the man who destroyed her perfect team.

"No, my darling," he answered, teeth as white as his skin. He continued playing, she continued following. "You see, Sasuke-kun is such an impatient child. And I imagine you must know how he... shall we put it, _rages_ when he thinks it's a waste of time. Very practical, he imagines himself. The poor dear, unable to enjoy the wonderful pleasures life is offering him."

He moved faster, closer to the pace he played earlier before he asked her to join him, pressuring her to do the same. His words barely registered in her mind as it took all of her concentration not to break to pace, feeling the beginning of an adrenaline rush at the satisfaction she was getting out of not missing a beat.

The edges of her lips were being pulled up into a smile she was resisting. She was supposed to be exasperated after being held up for far too long on something she expected to have been finished days ago. One did not have _fun_ under the influence of Konoha's monstrous child. But the enjoyment kept tugging at her mouth.

Orochimaru was vexing as hell, but he was also entertaining with all his oddities and everything else that came with a fucked up, fifty-plus-year-old, awfully talented Sannin. Why he was lax when it came to her, she left it to the reason of why he wanted her brought here.

Suddenly those slender fingers changed pace, no longer forming the simple notes Sakura was accustoming herself to just now, and they flowed on their own in a more complicated, harmonious melody. Too surprised by the development, her own hands abruptly froze as she stared at the source of the flowering tune until the last twinkling note was done.

Only then did she realize she was holding her breath.

His laugh made reality come crashing back down, the held breath escaping in a puff of air moving the blonde tangles in front of her eyes. Seeing their hands so close together on the keyboard, the similarity struck her, her fingers curling back loosely into her palms as a reflex to hide what she'd seen.

As casually as she managed, she folded her hands on her lap. Too effeminate for such a man, the sennin was known to be bordering on asexuality. How he had hands like a woman's did not bother her. It was the way they looked too much like her own. A knot of uncertainty was heavy in her chest.

But... wasn't this not his real body?

"Much too advanced for you, my dear," he lisped, giving her a pale smile. His next words were dripping in heavy meaning and flicked a switch. "It's just so _entertaining_ to have you around. I'm sorry if I get _so_ carried away."

Out of nowhere came Sasuke's repeated pressing of her to know the reason for her presence, how each time she felt the urgency and even slight desperation on his part. For him it meant a world of difference, a perfect timing of events she had no notion of and no part to play in. She was the wrench in his gears, and the secrecy was now stirring her own suspicions of the old man's intentions.

In a heartbeat she'd forsake Orochimaru's proposals for her avenger. All that it took to win the Uchiha back to Leaf, she'd do it.

"What am I doing here?" she asked almost timidly, meeting his stare with genuine green curiosity. "I don't think you just want to talk to me about the Godaime-sama's business."

The smirk disappeared, a cool neutral expression taking its place. For a moment she thought an anger smoldered beneath the gold placidity. The silence filled the air where the sweet melody had been previously, and then he spoke.

"Do you sing?"

"Do I, what?" Sakura almost choked on her own spit. "Sing? No, I don't."

He barely moved. A short, clipped nod of the head and a slow dread filled her at the way his eyes roamed her features, not dissimilar to how he first made her sit down and took in every physical detail of her person.

"Before she ruined it with sake and that horrible screeching all over the place when she gambled, Tsunade-hime had a nice voice," he told her in a low tone. "She and Jiraiya, they would sing after our missions at the bar we frequented."

By now, and she noticed with great difficulty, he tore away his gaze from her and a single fair, feminine hand stroked a last few tunes of the melody from the instrument and stopped.

"I was not blessed with their voice, but I made up for it with talent," he continued, sighing with theatrical lassitude. She merely wondered why he was telling her all this. It was... _so unlike him._ The way he was waxing sentimental about the whole ordeal made her squirm.

"And so I would no longer envy them because I was part of their happiness. Of course, all things have to come to an end, and so we all ended when we began leaving the village," the familiar unctuous smile filled his face when he faced her. "They lost their passion for the arts, I still have mine. Very _sad_, I must tell you, but such is life."

Clueless and lacking words to respond to that, Sakura nodded.

"Now, my child, I'm dreadfully tired. Be a dear and get on with what else you do," Orochimaru grinned, using a finger to tuck away a silvery pink tress from her face. The slits of his pupils narrowed, turning into a viper's golden eyes. "Be a bit more patient for a few more days, _I_ shall let you know what you should do then."

When she descended the stairs, a broken sonnet resumed behind her. Although not as a professional like the country's commoners and royalty who did not fight for a living, she had a decent enough voice. In the shower, in the public baths for the heck of it. When she was alone and heartbroken and happy. After missions if Naruto and Sai made her drink too much with Yamato-sensei helpless to stop all three of them. She could sing.

**ooo000ooo**

He pushed open the door and found Sakura curled up before the humongous desk in her room, wrapped up in a quilt on the hardwood chair and poring over an unraveled scroll. A pair of green barrettes pulled back her now two-toned hair on one side of her face, the color of her eyes. But what he focused on was Kabuto standing behind her, his lanky form crouched over her shoulder with both arms splayed on both her sides and hands firmly on either end of the scroll they were looking at. Brilliant sunlight streamed in from all the windows surrounding them.

"Get out," rasped from Sasuke's throat before he realized how he was reacting, his hand holding tightly onto the doorknob.

They responded too slow for his liking, the bespectacled man turning to his direction with a sly sneer.

"Oh, if it isn't Sasuke-kun."

He refused to meet those condescending eyes and turned to his former teammate, frowning at how she was so insipidly stupid to continue even talking to the pathetic excuse of a person behind her.

"Did you want something?" she asked innocently, emerald eyes darting from him to the paper in her hands. "We're kind of busy, so if it's not important..."

How fucking naive.

"Get. Out," he warned, directing the order to Kabuto but keeping dark gray eyes pinned on her, cutting off whatever else she had to say. To be so infantile as to assume he would approach her without purpose. If it wasn't important he wouldn't be here. If it wasn't important _she_ wouldn't be here at all.

The sarcastic laughter from the older medic thinned his lips, irresistibly pulling his attention to the way he openly mocked his person.

"I'll come back at a better time," he leaned in to her ear, saying it loud enough for Sasuke's benefit.

The way he straightened, in how he sauntered towards him in the doorway, everything about the man made his blood curdle. They were of a height and when he refused to budge when he passed by, the way the medic's shoulder brushed against him made him clutch at the metal door handle else he'd throw a fist at his smiling face. Not wanting to extend the torture, he slammed the heavy oak panel behind him.

An unhappily worried Sakura swaddled in the thick blanket awaited his rebuke.

"I told you to stay away from him," he said flatly. In all honesty he tried to be patient. He wanted to know what made her so hardheaded she wouldn't listen to sound, logical orders.

As though she found cause in him to be disappointed, she sighed deeply. Averting her eyes, she turned them onto the scrollwork in front of her and pursed her lips. He did not like her mood. He liked how the plastic emerald barrettes matched her irises despite the ruin of her hair, but that was beside the point.

"I'm not stupid, Sasuke," she finally answered dejectedly, finally looking up to meet his gaze. He could see how she was deliberating within herself how to continue. "Although unlike you, I'm actually human. I need someone who gives me some sort of emotional response."

He narrowed his eyes at his former teammate, thinking hard along the lines of, _What the fuck is she talking about?_

"You can talk to Karin," he responded.

Yes. Her talking to Karin, he could take that. Kabuto could go grow molds in his mouth. But it seemed to be a compromise Sakura didn't want because she was now holding her head in her hands. Of all things, he noticed she'd also painted her nails green.

His brow creased. It was a perfectly rational answer to her problem of having someone giving emotional responses. The redhead had so much emotional responses to anything a single conversation with her contained enough dramatics he could handle for a lifetime.

"It's not that," she said, the beginnings of mild frustration appearing across her face. "I... _need_ to be able to talk to Kabuto. He's a medic, like me. We have enough in common for me to learn from him."

Sasuke frowned at the way she stressed her _need_ as though she'd die if she wasn't able to get her way.

Though all semblance of wanting to kill her pathetic excuse of an existence disappeared when she managed to disarm him and turn around the fight they had the night before, he still was unnerved by how Sakura remained so gullible about practically everything. Kabuto was bad news. And she was flocking to him like a tomcat in heat. It was as if she was born with all her survival instincts working the other way around.

"Fine," he groused, rolling his eyes and walking over to lean back against the table in front of her. "Explain."

He crossed his arms across his chest, staring down at her and exerting a good amount of willpower to not throttle all the fight out of her on this issue. Whatever reason she had for this, he was willing to try and understand as long as it wasn't insane.

"Sasuke, it's not related to anything I'm here for. I swear on the will of fire, there's nothing wrong in what he's teaching me."

"Not good enough," he disapproved bluntly. He could care less about what they talked about.

"After this, I'm going back to Konoha, right?" asked Sakura, silvery gold brows drawing together. "You don't even want me around at all."

"And?" _Get to the point._

"I'm a medic," she stressed, taking a dry writing brush and toying with it. She couldn't even look at him with the way he glared down on her fiddling. "Back in the village you left, I have a life to get back to. It's... I didn't make a clean getaway, _you_ know that." Her green eyes flicked back up at him for a fraction of a second before she continued twiddling the rough bristles. "After we're done here, I'm going back to clinic duty and learning from Tsunade-sama and... and it's going to be hard, I _know_, but I still love what I do. What Kabuto is teaching me, it's going to help _that_ part of my life, my real life."

Sasuke remained silent, watching the silver pink head bob even lower in shame or self-reproach. All she said was, for some strange reason, a painful truth.

Nothing changed, was what he'd believed in when he was her the night of her abduction. In a sense, nothing did. She did come willingly with him after all, after just persuasion on his part. She could not resist him no matter how much she tried, how obviously she kept fighting the urge to give in to whatever mindless game he'd play her with. It was exactly the same as three years ago, only now he'd actually bother to tap into the potential of how he held sway over the most mundane decisions she made. Do this, do that, stop it, get out. She'd do it all.

Sakura would do it all, because she was cut off from the rest of her life.

The only reason she was in this far flung village with the Three Wolves the only landmark in sight, was because _he_ was here. He'd made her come here and she was stuck in the company of people she didn't know or trust. It was why he'd been so powerful when it came to whatever was happening with her. At this point, he was her only lifeline and he held every second of her life in his hands.

It was not to say he was not well aware of how she'd be like if they were in Konoha. She would have reasons, excuses to save her from what he wanted. Reports and sessions and duty that called in the middle of the night, papers to fill out and forms to pass. She'd had friends to save her, excuses at every turn to keep him at bay. She had survived three years without him, a life where he wasn't part of every day. And she gave importance to it. She cherished it like it was the only thing she had.

Heck, she was doing something here, in the only godforsaken place she was blessed to have his presence, and she was planning things of what she'd do once she got back. It was what made her _her_, after all. Sakura had grown because he wasn't there. It made painful fucking sense. It was so irritating.

He could feel a scowl tweak at his mouth and resisted opening with, _I don't give a flying fuck. I still don't want you talking to him._

"So," he said with the air of a reprimand, running one hand over his face and trying to come up with something sensible to say. He shrugged as casually as possible. "What could Kabuto possibly teach you that Tsunade can't?" _Isn't she supposed to be the greatest medic who lived or something?_

There was a light in her eyes, a spark of something reignited at his question. Suddenly it spread into a smile and he realized he'd touched upon the passion on which his former teammate had thrown herself at in his absence.

"Well, I suppose you wouldn't know the difference, not specializing in medicine, but I guess... um, I'd say it's different. Tsunade-sama has her own way of doing things, and most of it is in accordance to the law of Konoha," she babbled, immediately losing him as he tried to force his face into its familiar state of being stoic instead of grimacing and walking out. Kami, she was even randomly gesturing now, her hands trying to capture whatever it was she was talking on about.

"The thing is, Kabuto's methods are... they're unorthodox. Of course he's learned from Orochimaru so that would be obvious, but... I'm talking about the _difference_ it can make. I can save someone on the field and they'd be none the wiser. And there's so much potential for other techniques," she was running out of breath at this point and paused to inhale deeply. "It can make me better, I guess is what I'm saying. Stronger." Shining green eyes were smiling up at him. "I won't just rely on Tsunade-sama's teachings. I'd make my own."_  
_

Sasuke raised a dark eyebrow skeptically. As though she realized what she'd been saying and just who she had been talking to, the enthusiasm faded from her face and she annoyingly fiddled with the paintbrush once more.

"Or, something like that I suppose," she added meekly, biting her lower lip.

She was startled when Sasuke suddenly snatched the writing tool out of her hands, slapping it down on the table. Her fidgeting habit was getting to be increasingly frustrating to watch and he couldn't stand it a minute longer.

"It's Kabuto," he said, mentioning the name as though it burned him. "Do you really think he cares?"

Her mouth dropped open, clearly shocked by what he was asking, and he wanted to slap her for not seeing things the way he did. As usual, she needed him to explain to her every little thing for her to understand the big picture. She too fucking soft for this it was ridiculous.

"He's... teaching me already," Sakura replied slowly, but the doubt he planted was beginning to fester. Green eyes lingered on the writings scrawled on the parchment he was leaning on. "They're all legitimate techniques, he shows me... He does them and he tells me how to do it."

It gave him a black satisfaction to see her grasping at straws.

"I've tried them repeatedly," she said, as though pleading for the avenger to try and be more open for once. "They work."

"And what do you think he gets out of your arrangement?" he asked testily, narrowing dark gray eyes at his former teammate. If she didn't connect the dots at this point he might lose it and do something rash. She was vexing as _hell_. Her silence judged her guilty and he restrained from trying to hurt her. Bruise those unapologetic lips and mark her for the sheer stupidity emanating from her being.

The Uchiha bent forward with his arms still crossed, bringing him up close to those lost, doubting, emerald eyes.

"He's doing this for your _trust_," he hissed. Sasuke leaned back, smug with satisfaction. However, he did not expect the angered warp in her typically docile face.

"Sasuke, I would _never_ trust him," she said through gritted teeth, feet dropping down to the carpet as she pushed herself to her full height. "Not one bit! I'm just taking all what I can while I'm still here, and _that_ includes what he's offering me. Have you been even _listening_ to me? I..."

Her face crumpled, completely losing her momentum. Shoulders sagging, she looked defeated. _She gives up_, a small dark voice told him at the back of his head. _She's giving up and she's mine and she wouldn't fight._

"You can't always have what you want," she said, a shuddering exhale escaping her. "Orochimaru said I could be going in a couple of days. Just please, allow me this."

_A couple of days_. Sasuke was stunned.

No more harassing the gray-haired medic for going against his warnings. No more Orochimaru slithering away from his questions. No more Sakura to disgrace whatever good he remembered of Konoha. No more memories she'd revive. No more blonde, pink-haired girl intruding in _his_ life and tactlessly talking about his brother._  
_

No more restraint on his anger at her ignorance. No more caring about what she wanted to do with her life as she toyed with fate by messing with Kabuto. No more hitches when the time was ripe to rip apart the snake and move on with Hebi.

Only a couple of days more before he'd taste freedom. It was so sudden it was as if the floor dropped from under him, emerald irises pleading with him for a minutiae of understanding, a drop of compassion somewhere in his conscience. He should be happy she'd be gone.

It did not feel like a relief. It felt like an emptiness within him, a gaping void and a vacuum searching for something to fill it. What held him back from voicing the resounding _No!_ in his mind was the utmost confusion at why he didn't want her to go.

The complex clutter of feelings he was swamping in only angered him. He wanted to grab her by the hair at the back of her blonde-pink head, push her onto the bed and force himself on Sakura in the most painful way possible. This was bad. He was losing control of himself. He needed to get away from her poisonous presence so he'd think straight. He needed... air.

"Do whatever you want," he said acidly, turning away sharply from her and walking out of her room. He slammed the door shut behind him.

**ooo000ooo**

"Have you seen Sasuke-kun?" she asked, putting aside the medical texts she was reading to look at Karin.

The redhead was using her lap as a pillow, sharing the couch with her as her stocking clad legs took up the length of the sofa. Kabuto was napping on the other, the fireplace dancing with yellow flames. It was already after dinner and the Uchiha was nowhere to be found. Curiously not one of them saw a glimpse of him since this morning, around the time where he walked out on her.

Sakura bit her lip. The windows were frosting as the iron sky already turned into indigo, night falling with snow. _Where did you go?_

"No," replied Karin, looking up from reading the black, leatherbound notebook belonging to the Hokage. She had borrowed it, out of boredom. "Any problems?"

"Oh, no. Nevermind. I just haven't seen him since this morning," she replied. His absence was worrying her, partly because she believed their argument had something to do with it. "Get up, I'm going to get a blanket."

The redhead sat up to let her go and Sakura ascended the stairs, ignoring the thumps on the stairs even though the other medic was asleep.

The second landing was dark, no lights turned on with the wind whispering at the windows. She had to feel her way to her room, both arms stretched out and careful not to slip. When her hand closed upon the doorway, she noticed it was partly open.

Pushing the door fully open and stepping inside, she noticed a silhouette sitting on the edge of her bed, red sharingan glinting like coals in the shadows. None of her curtains were pulled open except the one above the desk, the streetlamps shedding a single silver block of light onto her table and slicing the carpet halfway across her room.

"You don't just enter without asking, you know," Sakura said, recognizing the eyes and turning around to close the heavy, oak panel behind her. She could hear the shift of the bed as Sasuke changed positions, reaching out to the switch nearby and flicking it open. Light flooded the room and she turned to face him. "We were downst…"

The words died on her lips.

Her heart pounded like the psychotics she had as patients in the mental wards, banging again and again against the glass wall, pounding heavily in her chest, heavily pulsing in her throat and ears as she recognized who it was sitting on the edge of her bed.

He was playing with her forehead protector, slowly tracing the engraved leaf symbol with slender fingers, nails painted a dark purple it was almost black. On his right hand, ring finger, there was a gold band with a glinting red emblem.

_It… it can't be… it's not possible…_

"You must forgive me," he started, looking up at her with those domineering, scarlet eyes. His voice was dulcetly low in the silence hanging thickly between them. "But you also understand I wouldn't be welcome if I was seen anywhere else in this house."

Sakura swallowed when he stood up, his black cloak sliding smoothly like water off the bed, gracefully taking a step towards her without a single sound. Her heart was still hammering madly but she didn't know if she should hold her tongue, attack or flee. He was looking at her through raven bangs, his own hiai-ate on his forehead displaying a slash across their village symbol. His ponytail was slung forward over a shoulder that she could see because the black robe (_with red clouds that remind you of early morning sunrises_…) was open, ebony strands reflecting the light overhead.

At the edge of her vision she barely noticed a bird had appeared, landing in front of the only window whose curtains were drawn back, dark feathers gleaming in the light that was a mixture of the sliver of streetlamps and orange of her room. It flapped its pitch black wings, slowly cocking its head to the side, watching her with beady ocher eyes. A soft _caw_, its scaly feet disturbing the snow piled against the glass as it hopped about.

"It's Haruno Sakura-san, isn't it?" he asked softly, unrelentingly keeping his powerful gaze on her. She couldn't say anything else in reply, his name stumbling through her lips.

"Uchiha Itachi…"

* * *

_Hush_


	10. X: Dei Ex Machinis

(Re-Edited Version)

This is the prelude to the second (and final) major chapter. The climax is next, and although I cannot promise how fast that will be seeing as its format will be the same as the first chapter, it's going to present the reason for all this madness.

Of course the story does not conclude there but it will get a heck lot of questions out of the way and hopefully I'll be able to wrap up the rest in two or three more final chapters. To be honest, I've never thought I'd be able to see the ending of this but it's getting closer and closer each time I add a few more lines to this story. I'm excited and saddened at the same time.

Thank you to the reviewers of the last chapter, it's been really nice reading your feedback, especially the lengthy ones. I feel the love. :D

Now... BRACE YOURSELVES!

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, only the theories presented here and your soul.

* * *

**Gods of Vindication**  
Part X: Dei Ex Machinis

_"…__can't remember caring for an hour or so, started crying and I couldn't stop myself… started running but there's nowhere to run to…_"

* * *

Sakura swallowed a scream threatening to overcome her. Only a small, silenced noise emanated from pressed lips, scarlet eyes immobilizing her. Across her stood the aggressor of her avenger, tall and dark and lethally dangerous. Even more than Orochimaru could ever hope to be.

She had never seen him this close.

Naruto had always been the one he sought. Naruto had always been their aim. Appearing out of nowhere to confront them, speaking merely to her blond teammate using illusions and deception, each time there always grew the uncertainty of his actions. What he told the jinchuuriki was between them and them alone. There was no margin of error where the message slipped past to her or Kakashi, and even Naruto expressed qualms about telling her anything. Or he did not know. Sakura never got around to finding out.

It was strange because at any of those times he could have nabbed Naruto, taken the vessel and contents alike, in a blink of an eye.

But he never did. He stood and spoke and stared and threatened. And did nothing.

She'd seen him. She'd seen his picture in the bingo books, his thirteen-year-old face set in a veritable blank mask. It was the only latest documented image of the murderer they could find. His succeeding appearances here and there wearing the banner of Akatsuki was too fleeting for anyone to manage an accurate physical description and give the printers an up to date face. Those fortunate enough to have glimpsed him came through with stories of inhuman skill and deadly force, correctly identifying him when shown the picture of the boy.

When Tsunade warmed up to her being her student, accessing and retrieving the most classified files become a day-to-day occurrence. Opportunity had presented itself at the most perfect of times and she never allowed that to slip through her fingers.

Day and night she had prowled into folders almost a decade old, poor storage nearly crumbling them into roach eaten confetti into her hands. It had not been enough of a deterrent for her. Maybe her twelve-year-old self would have quailed at the dirt and the rat droppings. That had been nothing to her already, there were worse things in the contents. They told her little, and they told her legends.

She'd found among ANBU dossiers the older Uchiha's papers, his spotless and jarringly perfect academy records up until he was entered in the government's militia. A lone certificate dated a couple of months later indicated his absurdly fast promotion to captain of a squad, then nothing more.

The sudden cap erasing all recorded history of secret shinobi duties clamped down and there was nothing more she found past that date of any worth. So Sakura moved on.

In the vaults of crime records, beneath the document storage buildings that rising high among the tops of the great trees, she had clambered into the underground hallways. The recesses into the earth provided her cover as guards roamed past because she was not supposed to be here. These were different people. They had worn the insignia of Konoha but they were not ANBU. Root operatives, she knew, were not under Tsunade's command.

In the caverns she had discovered the scroll used to take down all details of the massacre, contained with a seal she could not break. It had been properly arranged among a myriad others by order of date the infractions occurred.

That could have been the end of her search but she was not stupid enough not to make the connection between the dates of the bloody event and the version of the Konoha bingo book that first issued the name and image of one Uchiha Itachi.

Still she lacked the knowledge of why he decided to end everything with his family with such brutal precision, then leave his little brother alone and unscathed. Even why he was immediately drafted into Akatsuki was gaping mystery, posing more questions than answers.

Everything the S-class criminal did in the months leading up to the killings forever changed the village. Was it all for his brother? Was it to torment him, to leave him in nightmares for emotional destruction? Or was it for something running deeper, because there was something he saw in their precious clan and he was trying to save Sasuke rather than the other way around?

Or was it all because of power, and he needed his foolish little brother as a conclusion of sorts?

With enough patience and jugfuls of sake, she'd convinced their one-eyed teacher to tell her the barest details of why, _why_ Sasuke had become so consumed in the desire to destroy someone to the point of throwing away his own happiness and future. It had been the same night she found out Kakashi was probably a much stronger drinker than Tsunade.

All those statistics had scared her half out of her mind during lonely nights she'd remember their lost teammate. They were of an uneasy dread for who exactly he was going to face, an invincible killing machine who was his only remaining family. That single event she and Naruto had encountered his brother, she only managed a far view of the man in question, a handsome yet unremarkable memory except for the fact it proved the criminal organization was getting too close to the Kyuubi vessel than any of them were comfortable with.

Everyone talked of silent kills and ice cold words but it was never told from the mouth of a direct witness.

It was always a brother, an uncle, a teammate, a friend, or all of them making a long, daisy chained possible lie of what Uchiha Itachi really was like. Sometimes in the bars they'd end up in there were those brazen girls who whispered behind their hands of how good looking he was despite his blood-soaked reputation, giggling of how they wouldn't mind being with someone such as him since his face pardoned all the black sins in their eyes.

Sakura had more than once scoffed at such shallow fantasies, slamming back a shot of tequila, a taste she had developed from frequently traveling outside of Fire. How ridiculous, forgiving someone for killing off their whole family and leaving one just for the sake of a morbidly sick psychological torture? Fat chance.

She believed she had finally understood the hate Sasuke struggled through for all his life. Heck, if she'd meet Itachi again, she'd break medic protocol to make sure and land a few punches in to help her team with his capture. And _then_ they'd use him as lure for the missing Team Seven member to finally come home once more.

Endless hours were spent on daydreaming that stupid, idealistic scenario. With all her might she believed it could happen, a perfect solution for all the troubles. Because she believed she could do something, _wanted_ to believe she wasn't the helpless little Sakura always hanging back and needing to be saved. She would be strong.

All those fantasies were dashed in one brutal moment of reality.

Here was Itachi, in her room, holding her captive from a few feet away with a stare. And she could do _nothing_.

Taller than Sasuke, of this she was sure of, there was a quiet calm about him as though everything he did had a purpose, an omnipotence suffocating and permeating every inch of existence, down to the slow simple blink of his red, red eyes.

No one told her how terrifyingly beautiful he was, awashed with the warm, yellow light of incandescent bulbs. Nowhere in the countless pages she rifled through said his mere presence arrested whoever happened to see him, as though the very air surrounding him was a potent genjutsu. _Nothing_ at all had prepared her for the way he made her heart stop with the polite command of how he spoke.

_"You must forgive me..."_

She only knew this man through memorized statistics, his strength she could only determine through estimates and guessing games at best. There he was, standing before her like a god. And when he took a step forward, sandaled feet quiet on the thick rug, a most delicate curiosity drew together fine dark eyebrows. Crimson irises questioned through heavy black lashes.

"What are you _doing_ here?" he asked, a deep velvety voice elucidating the words.

This was stupid. Really, the situation was laughable if not completely absurd.

Why on the sweet loving earth would Sasuke's S-class criminal brother be in her room at all? Why was he bothering talking to her when he could be giving chase to his foolish little brother and torture him once he caught up? Or probably go after Naruto since wasn't he, after all, who they were trying to get as their oh-so-coveted Akatsuki goal?

_Run._

She couldn't move a muscle, frozen where she was standing, unable to look away from since she first laid eyes on him. Her back flush against the door, the rush of blood in her veins was so thunderously fast her lungs were bursting to catch up. Medical instinct told her she was hyperventilating, well past the point of panicking her body no longer bothered to cooperate with her. But whatever the scope of danger she was in, she could only stare back.

"What... Why are _you_ here?" she stammered, the first thing registering in her mind flying through her lips without a single thought. Green eyes widened and both hands clapped against her ill-timed mouth as though it could take back what had already been said.

Her fingers were trembling and cold against her hot face.

Confusion gradually melted away from Itachi's porcelain features and he gave a perpetual shrug of his shoulders, the cloak of black night and dawn clouds rustling like silk from its years of wear.

"I apologize if I caught you by surprise, but my presence here is of less consequence than yours," he stated almost casually, too casual it made the fine hairs on Sakura's arms rise.

He scared her. His ease, his seeming comfort in these surroundings full of other shinobi, it was a good indicator of how he was so sure in his capabilities of taking on all of them and getting away with it. As a wanted criminal he was of the same rank as Orochimaru, yet how could it be possible one could not sense the presence of the other?

"You are so far from home. Please, tell me this."

_Oh, you are so fucking good_, she recoiled inwardly. He was asking properly, the most ludicrous thing. For someone like him it was practically begging for information instead of hijacking her mind and forcing her to spew it out like a truth serum would.

And what was funny was, she would have done exactly just that had she herself known the true purpose of her stay here. She couldn't care less of what was supposed to be classified information or not for the sennin, if it gave her or Sasuke an advantage, she'd expose it in a flash.

"I... don't know. I'm sorry" she answered, lowering clenching fists from her mouth to her chest. Her mind raced through options her numb, fear-soaked body might be capable of doing. "He's never told us anything, I swear."

Through the veil of fear she perceived the doorknob just a few inches to her left, an inviting temptation. If she were fast enough... No. If she'd make enough of a commotion, someone would notice something was incredibly, horribly wrong. They needed to know _he_ was here.

_Kami-sama, Karin, don't you _feel_ him!?_ she berated the redhead in her mind, completely overlooking how she herself hadn't realize who he was until she'd turned on the light.

"There is no need to draw unnecessary attention, Haruno-san," Itachi breached her thoughts, causing her to bite her lip. Well, shit. Was he also capable of mind reading?

She did not think, possibly the most stupid thing she'd done since those glowing red eyes turned out to belong to someone else.

Spinning on her heel, cold nervous hands shot out and latched onto the doorknob like a lifeline, and not feeling nor sensing any resistance against the sudden action. She deluded herself into thinking she must have been fast enough, twisting the brass metal knob, pulling it open.

Her eyes screwed shut at the bitter moment of reality when her shoulder was yanked back. With the speed of light both Sakura's wrists were pinned above her head using a single powerful hand, her back brusquely reintroduced to the heavy oaken door to loudly slam it shut as her weight was thrown against it.

The magnitude of her failure washed over her like ice water, the dread of death seeping through her nerves. Kami-sama, now she'd spat on his mercy he was going to kill her, she was going to die, this was it, this is the end and her body was going to be found cold and setting into rigor mortis when someone—

Gradually the smell of fire assailed her senses, something she dangerously trademarked as Sasuke's alone, finding through hiccuped breaths the courage to look up into the unsettlingly still sharingan of his older brother. _I'm still alive!_

Uchiha Itachi possessed a raw sexuality about him, something very absent, she suddenly realized, in his younger brother. She could not say whether it was only he who owned such an enigmatic charisma or it was Sasuke who was lacking because pity her, the case of the eradication of their kin was staring her down for directly going against his orders and trying to escape. A warm, tingling sensation in the pit of her stomach made her queasy.

The scent of smoke and his sweat and the traces of soot on his skin had her deducing he had come from somewhere else (_an assassination or another mass killing...? a dead jinchuuriki somewhere, Naruto...?_) and only an chance detour brought him here to her room.

He was so close she could see those long, girlish lashes of deep-set eyes, so close she could see distinctly the patterns of the sharingan with the way he was bent over to meet her face to face. He was so close they were breathing in the same air, inhaling what he exhaled, the defining musk of his identity. It did nothing to detract from the heat building within her, pooling in her loins at the way he held her vulnerable.

All those overheard conversations and whispered laughter of bowing to the ministrations of the older Uchiha, to be prostrate under such talented hands despite his cruel reputation, came flooding back to her. _So this is it_, she wondered idly, his lips so achingly the same as his brother's up close.

He was not panting (_goodness no..._) not hard pressed for oxygen unlike her. It was a perfectly even rhythm sweeping across her face with every breath out, the pulse in the hollow of his throat a balanced tempo. This was what those shallow, mindless, insensitive gigglers were talking about. It shamed her how she was — despite knowing better and _hoping_ to do better — being affected in the same way if not worse. If she'd only tip her head up a bit more she would end up kissing him, which she wasn't quite sure as to how he'd react to.

She squirmed, half trying to get away and half trying to put more distance between them.

"Please avoid escaping again," he said calmly, soft voice whispering against her skin in hot, measured breaths and effectively freezing her in position.

"If I see you even trying to use chakra," he added, leaning in closer to her ear, his free hand coming to rest opposite on her waist, its heat passing through her shirt and nesting on her skin, "I will kill you."

Out the window went all the ideas of wrenching free with her chakra-enhanced strength and slamming her fist into the floor. It could have been a good escape/distraction/sign of his presence but reason dictated to value her life more.

_Sakura, you idiot. He's offering you another chance, you better make good on it!_ Castigating herself did not help although it brought things back into proportion. Besides, if he had wanted her dead he could have done so even before she realized who she was dealing with, let enough at any point in time.

She didn't like him, she really didn't. Itachi was the reason Sasuke was doing all of this – this madness of running to Orochimaru for help, his death the incentive for him leaving the village. She knew she would never really understand how much the younger Uchiha truly hated him, but she had her own reasons for her odium against this man. Any excuses she could make because right now she was scared shitless, and it didn't change the fact that she couldn't wrap her head around Itachi being in her room.

After constantly chasing Naruto and giving chase to Sasuke, and overlooking her, he was here. Looking for _her_. Talking to _her_.

But no. She would not be intimidated by this... by this... _Monster._ Whatever he appeared to be, however he wanted to style himself as, he was always going to be a monster to her, spawned out of the depths of the netherworlds. She needed all her wits about her, comply by the rules he set and try to beat him at it. He needed her alive? She needed to stall. Get as much as she could from him and... and then what? _Think, Sakura!_

"Answer my question," Sakura murmured, voice quiet as she could in the muted shadow of his height. It was do or die. If she was gonig to be terrorized by this man, she should at the very least be able to get something useful.

If Sasuke would find out she'd met his brother, spoken to him shinobi to shinobi and was untouched in the face of adversity plus nothing to show, she doubted she'd remain unhurt for long. The volatility of her former teammate's temper assured her he'd take every second of being in Itachi's presence out on her skin.

She might as well do something since she did not trust herself to ignore and lie about such a development. Or do it with a straight face.

There was a soft swallow on his part and green eyes followed the way his throat moved. Fearing she wouldn't be able to hold up meeting those fearsome eyes directly, she'd settled on focusing beneath his face. She knew he was capable of employing illusions even without the aid of his bloodline limit but it was purely out of her personal conviction that she refused to see him eye to eye. If he was annoyed by what she was doing he sure wasn't showing it.

"I swear on my own life, I don't know why I'm here," she repeated with conviction, _Because if I won't believe I can pull this off then who else would?_, feeling relieved she did not sound half as scared as she truly was feeling. "But I also asked, and I want an answer from you too."

For a solid minute he did not respond, only disquisitively look at her with cold calculation. There was no way to know what was going on in his black as night head and she could feel how mundane, how pathetically nothing she was in his point of view. If she played at being more interesting, it might just buy her more time.

Those lips parted (_too soft looking by any standard but it matched him so perfectly with the hint of hours-old stubble because he was a _man_ and he was not Sasuke, he was _definitely_ not Sasuke..._) and he spoke, breaking through her comparisons.

"I see," he cadenced, in an accent and speaking manner so different from his brother's but with a voice whose origins were painfully the same. "I'm here for my foolish otouto's protection."

_Are you kidding me!?_ she screamed inside her mind.

Not a single word of it passed through her teeth but her expression must have betrayed her. It was in the simple way his lips tightened, vacant red irises boring right through her.

"I may not convince you, though it's not quite my problem," was the hard, silky response. His posture straightened bringing fresh, cold air back to her instead of the essence of his heated breaths. "Let's just be clear. You are here in the land of Iron, alive, with Orochimaru, with my brother, and you don't know why?"

If he put it that way it did seem rather like a fruitless endeavor.

"Yes," was Sakura's only sobering reply, turning to look to the side to distract herself on the mess of her desk. She was finally calming down and she didn't want to ruin anything just now. Not when a wrong move, a wrong decision might cost her more than she was willing to sacrifice.

The hold on her wrists wasn't strong, only enough to keep them up above her head. It could have also been a way to tell her she wasn't worth expending any effort over but she had a nagging feeling he was not doing this for the sheer fun of hurting her.

Now _that_ was such a messed up comparison, especially considering Sasuke was such a demented sadist when enough buttons were pushed. Of course, seeing the younger brother was so heartlessly brutal even minus the fact he tried to kill her, the older brother must be absolutely psychotic, right? _Right?_

The hand on her hip was warm and light, his worded threat and posture menacing because of his notoriety but she had yet to see a blade, yet to feel any agonizing torment except the shock and awe of his plain presence. Even with her wrists pinned uselessly above her head, the hold was slack as though he'd perfectly calculated how much pressure she could take before she'd feel pain.

If she pulled just enough, she could break herself loose.

"Do you think that by being here, you're helping my brother?" he asked, a quiet seriousness in his tone. The way he spoke, so mellifluously low, stirred what strands of pink and blonde hair strayed in her face.

It was obvious he had no qualms about invading her personal space, although her nitpicking side deduced it could be another tactic of distraction.

It was understandable how keeping her under wraps was important to _his_ motive but this, the bare inch of space between them, it was a tad too much. He made her feel so exposed but then again, she had no problems letting him do whatever the hell he wanted so long as he didn't kill her or turn her into a vegetable.

Sakura was not so bullheaded as Naruto. She was well aware of her own limitations and knew when to give up. Kakashi once told her she had some talent for genjutsu, but even she knew if she was pitted against the older of the Uchiha brothers, there was nothing she would be able to do to break out of whatever phantasmal vision he could use. He almost destroyed her teacher in a single illusion. She could not fight him if she wished to live. She would't.

What remained for her was to take whatever was dealt her and hope he was not the kind of lunatic who changed his mind at the last minute and decide he wanted her dead. After all, she was dealing with Uchiha Itachi. Even Konoha did not have enough records to determine the stability of his sanity.

Still, his question was perplexing. Why, indeed? What was she doing here? Had she not come here because of Sasuke? Because she wanted to help him, to _be_ with him? To make him come home?

She bit her lip. _What do you want me to say?_

Everything made no sense. All this man's actions were so contradictory. If she told him she was here to help his brother, would he kill her to prevent Sasuke from becoming stronger? Or would he let her live?

"Haruno-san, please answer me."

It was a gamble. Every beat of her heart a dull, painful ache, seeing past his heavy lashes to meet a faint image of herself reflected in rubies.

"I..."

The words were catching in her throat but she swallowed, seeing impatience in those scarlet eyes. Just say it. _SAY IT!_

"I love your brother," she choked, desperately hoping he would be gracious enough for mercy. "I love Sasuke and I'll do anything, _anything_ to keep you away from him!"

A heartbeat.

Then... relief. She could't believe it.

Itachi's face visibly relaxed, a tenseness in his posture she noticed only now disappearing as his shoulders sagged, the hand on her waist considerably tightening its hold as though to support his weight. He took a deep breath, a slow blink of his dark, maroon eyes lending a softness to his features.

Was this... what he wanted?

_Yes!_ her inner self cheered, another surge of adrenaline pumping into her body. The risk paid off.

"Make me a promise," he ordered in the smooth baritone that sounded like Sasuke when he was quietly contemplating something.

"Wait, a what?"

The restraint pinioning her arms above her head relented.

Sakura found herself staring at large palms and slender fingers clasping both of hers tightly but gently, stained in black smudges of soot from the unmistakable hallmark of grand fireballs, her heart lurching in her throat. Was he letting her go? Was this it? Everything was still not making any sense, the connections lost on her as she raised green eyes to look the enigma of a man in the face.

He was still looking down at their joined hands. Elegant eyebrows were drawn together in what seemed like confusion to her.

"I... Itachi?"

Red irises snapped up to meet hers and for a hair-raising second the sharingan swirled before it slowed to a halt. She mentally checked and was mollified to know nothing felt wrong with her, feeling the heat of his hands around hers.

"Make me a promise," his formidable voice etching every important word into her memory, demanding her full attention. "Whatever you will come to know here, protect Sasuke. _Whatever happens you will not fail him._"

The forceful way he intoned the command made her press back into the tough oak of the door, all reason thrown to the wind at why he was ordering her to do such a thing as she nodded by instinct, apprehensive for the life of her. A frown pulled down at the edges of his mouth.

"I-I will," she swallowed lightly, licking dry lips.

What followed next was what finally pushed her into the spiral of despair she was trying to avoid to slip into since the time she laid eyes on the older brother of the one she loved. It felt like the culmination of every unfortunate circumstance possible to Sakura, and she could do nothing but bite her lip and try to fight back the tears of helplessness that brimmed misery into emerald eyes.

Three powerful raps against wood.

"Sakura, I know you're in there. Open this door!" Sasuke's angry voice reverberated, hanging in the air between her and his brother.

**ooo000ooo**

After storming outside Sasuke had spent his day in the icy forest, sitting in wet snow underneath a blackened tree and mulling over what had happened. Wind blew and snow crystals settled on his lashes but he had only stared dead ahead into the nothingness, lost in thought.

_What have you done to me?_ he reprimanded her in his head. This was completely unlike him.

He never thought of her as anything other than a giant, pestering nag who could do nothing more productive on her own time. His head had hurt from thinking too much, from wasting so much time trying to pinpoint exactly where he went wrong.

She was _nothing_ to him. Nothing.

Yet every time he saw her now, he wanted to grab her, take her, hurt her. One way or another something she'd say or do would shatter all his resolve of not giving a fuck and want to _do something_ about the tormenting fountain of whatever it was inside of him that only exacerbated when she was around. He'd tried doing almost everything to make it go away. Heck, he'd attacked her, hurt her, _kissed_ her.

It did _nothing_.

She was so wrong it hurt to even know she breathed and dreamed and lived, and continued on fucking living like whatever gods there were saw fit to insult his own existence by creating her.

He'd find himself so lost in wanting to end her but at some point it would hit him how he _didn't_ want her gone. And then the next thing she'd do is prove to him he was wrong and push the circle to come round again to feeling so much hate for her it was driving him insane.

The reasonings he cooked up just to give an explanation for feeling like this, they might have worked only temporarily. In the long run it seemed he lost part of the battle in controlling his emotions. Had she grown on him, unconsciously, subconsciously getting under his skin? Only he denied it ever happened, it ever could happen, not wanting to acknowledge it? Had he believed he could shove her away, pull her back harder at a snap of his fingers and expect no retribution on his part? That he won't be affected?

Somewhere from when the sun begun fading in the purple sky to when the crystal stars winked he'd wondered if this was what Orochimaru wanted. That he'd called for her, the sole purpose of an excruciating affliction, to wreak havoc on his sanity. Was it? So he would be wasted, much too jaded, pulling his mind apart for easier reception of the parasite of the sennin's mind?

It had to be. It seemed to be the only answer.

For fuck's sake the slimy cock wasn't even doing anything to her. They just talked as though killing time had been part of his ultimate purpose.

_If this is what you want, you're failing_, he brooded darkly, watching the golden red disc disappear below the peaks of the Three Headed Wolf. This fucking game had to come to an end eventually. If his mentor believed he wouldn't notice then it wouldn't be his problem.

This very night, he would come to grips with everything. He weighed his decisions, knowing exactly what had to happen. _Sakura. You're not part of this__._

And once he'd removed her and she was gone, he'd duel with the Snake and destroy him.

His brother was waiting. Three, four, five, six, seven years. The reason he'd done everything he did until now. He was strong enough already. He _hated_ enough. He'd kill him, and his foolish aniki would regret he ever let him live.

**ooo000ooo**

Those intense red eyes were smothering Sakura, her front teeth grinding down against the skin behind her lip without care for the blood she could taste. She could not move, could not cry, could not mouth a single word in utter fear the person banging on the door would know who was in her room.

"Sakura! Open the door!"

It did not surprise her Itachi did not seem the least bit troubled at the sudden presence of his younger brother. In fact, from how the dark red of his blood limit unwaveringly zeroed in on her he did not appear to have even heard Sasuke shouting a few feet away.

He must have picked up on his presence, felt him, a long time before Sasuke had made his demands, however way he did it. She doubted anything would be able to catch Uchiha Itachi off guard.

"One more thing, Haruno-san," came the sultry whisper, the sharingan relentless in keeping her prisoner as one of his hands rose to mildly brush her chin and release her lower lip from the clamp of her teeth. The smell of smoke was still strong and she knew it would follow her back creeping into her nightmares.

His voice was low and soft but her paranoia was screaming at her that his brother could hear them.

"The only people who must know of me visiting you, are the both of us."

Stained, gentle hands released her as he (_the killer, deserter, murderer, jukeisha..._) effortlessly moved towards the window above her desk, the only one open and curtains thrown back. Knees bending, spine bowing as though he were about to take flight, street lights sparkling in the frost settled in his black hair. The urgency to stop him hit Sakura so hard it made her question herself.

He mustn't go. _Don't!_ There was something so much deeper, she just _felt_ it, three more rapid knocks banging on the door, because this didn't have to be the end. She had so many things to ask, so many cobwebs to sweep away. There _had_ to be something else...

"Wait!"

Her feet moved on their own, sprinting across the room towards the fallen angel crouching on the window sill, reaching out to grab him back, stop this mistake. His figure tensed into a pause, dark head turning to look towards her over his shoulder just as she halted right before she verged upon him.

Her outstretched hand, fingertips already brushing the fabric of the cloak of darkest nights and scarlet dawns, curled back into her chest as if she realized just who she was asking to stay.

_Stop, wait. Talk to me. Please._

Whatever she had to say to him, all those questions, were gone, stilled on her tongue, paralyzed by fear, by uncertainty. She didn't know what to start with, no words to give. All she knew was that he needed to explain so much because there were a lot of things, in those files in the dusty folders or the scrolls with unbroken seals, they required answers no matter how long they've been waiting. And he could give those. He had to—

Itachi reached out, his fingers ever so tenderly sliding across her hairline, taking a loose lock from the green barrettes between his middle and index fingers. The mark of fire stained her hair as his touch slipped past the pink roots and stopped at the strands where the silver gold dye had yet to fade. Impassive, all-seeing eyes.

A faintly amused smile tinged his lips.

"The resemblance... is incredible."

**ooo000ooo**

It splintered beneath the force of Sasuke's foot, the oak panel banging open with a tearing snap as the brass doorknob was ripped away from the wall, twisted metal hanging loosely from its socket. Frankly, he could not believe it had come to this but the intense loathing was leaking inside of him, bitter memories breaking what he had been rebuilding in himself little by little in the past few days.

_Sakura_.

Refocus on what was important, reorganize his priorities. No more diversions, no more games. Waiting for her to leave wasn't fast enough. It wouldn't cut it. For all the time she was here she'd been breaking him down, spelling disaster. This was going to be his goodbye.

Through the wood fibers floating in the air, slow in their descent, he could see her, standing still in front of the giant desk, facing an open window blowing ice crystals into the room. The heavy floor to ceiling curtains stirred on each side of her, short blonde hair fluttering in the wind except for those plastered down by the shiny plastic clips, as green as her eyes. He could not see her face, her back turned towards him.

"Sakura."

The twitch at the sound of his voice was extremely visible, he could practically feel the anxiety emanating from her as though she were a tensed coil wound so tight she could shatter. _So fucking pathetic._

"You always keep doing this, making me wait so much it makes me hate you so much, you know that?" he breathed, striding across the deep blue carpet, his bare feet sinking into its lushness.

The moment his hand settled on his former teammate's petite shoulder, she whirled around.

"I'm sorry!"

Green, red-rimmed eyes bright with tears, small white teeth biting down on a swollen lower lip. Her usually smooth cheeks were mottled with deep red splotches, skin so pale it was nearly translucent. Dark circles under soft, magenta lashes. Haggard, tired, stressed. _By what?_ Clearly she had been like this even before he'd come calling and destroyed her door. It raised a waving red flag, a foreboding thought telling him he already knew why.

_Orochimaru is making his move. _She took a step back, pressing into the desk and wiping away her tears with the heels of her palms. She looked scared, shaken. _Of me? What the fuck happened?_

"Sasuke, I'm sorry, he—"

"_Sa_kura, dear. What's happened to you?"

All the pent up frustration Sasuke felt, the confusion of powerfully conflicting emotions within him, almost exploded. In rusty, jerky movements he managed to turn around, not exactly holding back the glare at the person who interrupted her, standing in the doorway with a polished smile.

"Tsk, tsk, Sasuke-kun, you mustn't treat her so badly," his mentor sibilated, moving like the snake he was, arms silkenly crossing over his chest. The black trench coat he was wearing contrasted painfully against his white complexion, the violet skin around his eyes bringing out the golden slit-pupiled irises. From a few meters away he could still see the decadence of the sennin's expression, goading him.

Unable to take the frown off his face, he moved from Orochimaru's golden glee to look at Sakura. All color had drained from her face.

"Well," the sennin flourished as he gestured toward them with a single hand, open palmed as though he were oblivious to the mess Sasuke had strewn across the carpet. He did not fail to see how the hand was extended towards his former teammate. "I shall be taking our guest out for a nice dinner. And _you_ be a good boy and stay here, hmm?"

"No."

Both pairs of eyes flicked toward Sasuke at the flat out rejection but he found he couldn't stomach all the pretending happening here, curling hands tempted to release the lightning building within.

"Sasuke-kun," came the saccharine scolding, the offered hand lowering, "your tantrums are getting old. A dinner with Karin might ease your mood. In fact, she's already waiting downstairs. Sakura, my child," his glittering smile taking over his face, "It's time."

_NO!_ his mind screamed at every turn, at every insistence. And he would have made it clear what he wanted when he felt a warm hand on his arm, feeling her walk around him to see him face to face. He knew his glare had refocused on her but he didn't care.

"Please, let me do this," she pleaded in a soft whisper. "I won't take too long. I'll come back."

_No! _Anger was being stoked within the recesses of his mind, to grab her, stop her, make her do as he wanted. About to voice another brutal rejection, he was stopped when she mouthed a few words. She stood in front of him, her back to the door and to Orochimaru. She'd done it on purpose, a cold feeling overtaking him.

_"I love you."_

Those sad, green eyes were looking at him, imploring for consideration. From behind her his mentor approached them, taking one of her hands in his from behind.

"Ta-ta, Sasuke-kun," he lisped, too preoccupied with some insanity of being happy with his guest to bother noticing the frozen look on his face.

Minutes after the two had exited the room, the pink-blonde hair curling around the ends as she turned for a last time to look at him lingered in his memory. Whether it had been to a reassurance or a call for help, he did not know. But what he could distinctly pick out from the hazy image in his mind was the way their hands were joined, her dainty fingers enclosed by his soft palm. Even as they had disappeared into the darkness of the hallway he remained rooted where he stood. The sensation of fine hairs rising swept across his flesh, not from the breeze of the open window.

Everything came flooding back to him, the realization of uncanny similarities that had progressed as the days lengthened, minute instances so common and so overlooked, the way the light touched her face, the tremendous care ordered for her delivery, it was beginning to fall into place between the two of them. The smooth, clear skin. The frightful intelligence. The lack of his morbid experimentation usually reserved for specimens who greatly took his interest. Those hands. Those _hands_ (_reaching out toward her again, her own reaching out to meet his, large palms as soft and white as powder taking hers_...) had to be a coincidence.

Massaging his temples, Sasuke tried to think fast if his assumptions were lining up correctly. He could be mistaken for all he knew, a kismet not even worth wasting time on. There were a lot of explanations ready to justify the horrible, sinking sensation at the... the _theory_ he came up with. It was a scandal. Could it be...?

The last Uchiha bit on the knuckle of a fist, trying hard to catch the thoughts making sense which were barely fleeting in his head, straining to see the connections, to make out what had he missed.

Breathing deeply, another familiar voice interrupted his preoccupied thoughts.

"Sasuke?"

The voice was timid and low, coming from the outside of the room. _Not again_. From the shadows emerged bright red hair, her glasses winking in the soft yellow lights of Sakura's room. It wasn't a particularly good time to catch him, the ghosts of those bonds surfacing for a starkly bright millisecond already fast fading into the background of his insecurities and murky emotions.

"What do you want?" he asked sharply, warily taking out the hand from his mouth as he raised his gaze, hardly keeping the disturbed undertones out of the way he spoke. He really didn't like any company at the moment. "How long have you been standing there?"

Karin bit her lip, leaning against the side of the doorway without the splintered mess of wood, appearing more worried than anything.

"I was with Orochimaru-sama, but I stayed back," she answered, fingering the hems of her sleeves in a nervous habit. "Sasuke... he's up to something. I can feel it."

A heartbeat passed.

"Do you still remember where to find Suigetsu and Juugo?"

Every fiber of his being was tensed, agitated.

"Of course."

"Look for a map we can use," he ordered, voice rough, eyes blazing red. "Then get ready to leave."

* * *

**AN:** FUCK YEAH

I know, I know. A lot of shit went down in this chapter, and that's exactly how it's supposed to go. :D If you can tell where this is going, feel free to give me your thoughts and all the good stuff you want to let me know, criticisms, flames, whatever. COME AT ME, READERS!


End file.
